. • t.':.«i".stiif«!.-.-B«s,:V?'aJiKS<.\'J2U!j;>aiIK'.- 

"FOKTHE 

WORKERS 



PERCTvSTICRNEY- GRANT 




Class HJ^ QT^X^ 



Gopyjight]^'^. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 



FAIR PLAY FOR THE 
WORKERS 



SOME SIDES OF THEIR MALADJUST- 
MENT AND THE CAUSES 



BY 

PERCY STICKNEY GRANT 




NEW YORK 

MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 

1918 



<^ 



Copyright, 1918, by 
MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 



• •- • 



©C1.A508098 

Published September, 1918 

NOV -9 1918 



TO 

THOMAS L. CHADBOUBNE 

Member and Counsellor of the War Trade Board 
Washington, D. C. 

Dear Tom, 

When the British Munition Commission were in New York last 
fall, they were given a luncheon at the McAlpin, hy Mayor Mitch- 
eVs Committee on National Defense, of which you were Chairman. 
At the luncheon Sir Stephenson Kent, K.C.B., Chairman of the 
British Mission, declared: " // Great Britain had had the trouble 
with labor America is having, it toould have lost the war." 

A working agreement between capital and labor for the pro- 
duction of munitions does not settle their controversy. Labor 
in Great Britain has been very loyal to its agreements; yet 
Mr. Arthur Henderson, on February \, 1918, could say that 
the condition of labor in Great Britain was dangerous. Some^ 
thing more than a truce is essential even in war time for indus- 
trial efficiency. 

As a war-time measure such knowledge and sympathy as will 
bring the two sides of our industrial life most completely together 
are necessary for national success. The present volume is an at- 
tempt to put before conservatives some of the positions of labor, 
from the historical point of view. 

You have, perhaps, seen some of the material of this volume in 
the North American Review and in a book of mine, called " So- 
cialism and Christia/nity ." 

May I finally say that I put your name in the front of this 
book as an expression of my admiration. You are a sort of 
superman of size and sympathy — the biggest thing I know 
physically, and also one of the feiv men of means willing to 
discuss the labor question on its merits — that is, without ani- 
mosity. Upon the extension of this spirit, in my opinion, de- 
pend the future peace and safety of our country. 

You are fond of Ralph Waldo Emerson. I am sure you will 
recall the following quotation from " The Progress of Culture." 

" When classes are exasperated against each other, the peace 
of the world is always kept by striking a new note." 
Sincerely yours, 

A^ension Rectory ^^^^^ STICKNEY QRANT. 

New York 
March, 1918 



" The real question everywhere is whether the world, distracted 
and confused as everybody sees that it is, is going to be patched 
up and restored to what it used to be, or whether it is going 
forward into a quite new and different kind of life, whose exact 
nature nobody can pretend to foretell, but which is to be dis- 
tinctly new, unlike the life of any age which the world has seen 
already. ... It is impossible that the old conditions, so 
shaken and broken, can ever be repaired and stand just as they 
stood before. The time has come when something more than 
mere repair and restoration of the old is necessary. The old 
must die and a new must come forth out of its tomb." 

Phillips Brooks, 
Sermon, "The Light oi the World." 



PREFACE 

The most unexpected result of the war is, 
perhaps, the enlarged influence of the working- 
classes, — an influence that after the war seems 
likely to increase. The people have recently- 
emerged to new power in many countries, — in 
China, in Russia, in Mexico, in Great Britain, 
which is anxiously arranging for labor and gov- 
ernment to proceed in closer accord, in India, 
to which Great Britain has sent a commission 
to prepare for some degree of native independ- 
ence. Labor organizations in several countries 
communicated with each other in efforts to pre- 
vent war, or, since, to secure peace. A proposi- 
tion by Socialists to hold a conference in Stock- 
holm was considered important enough to be 
discouraged by the Allied Governments. The 
United States has appealed to the German people, 
over the heads of their rulers, and welcomes any 
sign of a revolutionary spirit. The President left 
Washington in war time to attend a convention 
of the American Federation of Labor, at Buffalo. 
Labor committees from Great Britain have visited 
us. The proletariat of most of the countries have 
taken a new part in war discussion and look for- 
ward to signal influence at the peace councils. 
This coming to the front of the workers of the 
world is the important news of our times. 

vii 



viii PREFACE 

The day of the proletariat has arrived, but 
America is not ready. I do not mean that 
anarchy, or even Socialism, is knocking at the 
door, or that plutocracy is packing up. A new 
and commanding influence to be exerted by the 
working-class has arisen. America is unpre- 
pared to meet the situation because it has failed, 
on the whole, to grasp the profounder concerns 
of the people's hopes and has given aristocratic 
status to its successful classes. 

The object of this volume is to call attention to 
some of the consequences of our blindness to the 
world's deeper democratic activities and to the 
dawn of proletarian control. A review of a few 
subjects upon which the working-people have 
strong opinions, not well understood outside their 
class, may facilitate our passage from before-war 
to after-war times when labor will undoubtedly 
expect to exercise larger powers. 

One reason for our plutocratic type of de- 
mocracy is to be found in our religious and 
economic conservatism. Professor Ross discov- 
ers ^*wiir' to be the profoundest character- 
istic of the American colonists. American re- 
ligion, politics, business, athletics are still run 
by ^^will" and its *^get there" representatives. 
But something more is necessary than will, as, 
for instance, science and sympathy. The time 
has come for America to create a new will com- 
pacted of knowledge and love as well as of dogged 
resolution. 



PREFACE ix 

So it comes about that the real tragedy of 
American life is that while we live in the midst 
of optimistic facts we are governed by inher- 
ited pessimistic theories: — Calvin's depravity of 
human nature; Malthus' theory that man is too 
prolific for nature; Adam Smith's laisses faire 
economics, with selfishness as a stabilizer of 
industry. Our job is to jettison these Jonahs 
and to catch up with present reality. 

Besides our inherited pessimism as observed in 
religious and political motives, the generation that 
came over into the twentieth century was in- 
fluenced by the pessimism of some of its greatest 
poets. Swinburne's incomparable lyricism never- 
theless yielded a depressing picture of man : 

"A silent soul led of a silent God, 
Toward sightless things led sightless. ' ' 

Even Matthew Arnold got no further than to 
cry out bitterly: 

''But now the old is out of date, 
The new is not yet born." 

Now the new is born and events are neither 
' * silent ' ' nor ^ ' sightless. ' ' The day of the people 
has come : clarion voices proclaim it. 

We have not dreamed what can be done 
to prevent human woe. ^'Prevention" must 
be as signal a word as "Salvation" has been. 
** Alleviation, " the aim of so many religious and 
kindly people, is a timid and hopeless word. 
Again, we have been pessimistic. "Human life 



n PREFACE 

must be some kind of a mistake, '' says Schopen- 
hauer. Not a bit of it, but man had made the 
mistake of accepting his miseries as essential to 
existence and therefore permanent, or as the mys- 
terious will of overruling supernatural powers. 

The optimistic facts of life revealed to our 
generation are staggering in their splendor. 
Take, for instance, the statement of the warden 
of the Colorado State Penitentiary. ^'In my 
judgment 60 per cent, of the sane, able-bodied 
men now confined in the penal institutions, both 
State and Federal, of the United States, are 
trustworthy, and if properly handled can be 
made available for work anywhere in the United 
States. Our experience in handling honor men 
at the Colorado State Penitentiary proves this 
beyond question. Of course, there are the other 
40 per cent, who are mentally defective and 
truly dangerous from whom society must pro- 
tect itself.'' 

Or, turn to the subject of industrial accident, 
where it has been thought that the human element 
was possibly more responsible than any other and 
could not be controlled. 

** Spend enough upon the engineering problems 
and serious and fatal accidents will be very largely 
eliminated. What is the limit of reduction in 
severe and fatal cases? The possibilities of im- 
provement in physical conditions are almost un- 
limited. It is possible to conceive industry con- 
ducted under conditions so safe that the occur- 



PREFACE xi 

rence of severe injury will excite the same surprise 
that its absence now does.'' * 

Two-thirds of the insane in the country need 
not have been insane. One-half the sick in the 
country need never have been brought to their 
beds. Much of what we have called crime is 
found to be due to physical and mental defects, 
and of the 300,000 defectives in the country, per- 
haps one-half of them can be greatly improved. 
Psychotherapy, as seen in Christian Science, the 
Emmanuel Movement, Psychoanalysis, and in 
other mental healing, has opened a sunlit door. 
The ancestry of many of the fears and supersti- 
tions which worry and weaken human nature is 
now so plainly revealed that they should be easily 
removed. The power of environment is discerned 
with increasing and fresh illustration. For in- 
stance, the Insurance Act in England is not meet- 
ing full expectations because whatever may be the 
better medication or sanitorium treatment of the 
sick poor, they have to return to housing and 
neighborhood conditions that largely undo the 
result of their medical treatment, while the agri- 
cultural laborers of England, whatever their eco- 
nomic misfortunes, are physically the best. 

Speaking of modern welfare work Jane Addams 
says: ^^The moral basis of all these movements 
is the excellence of human nature under decent 
conditions." Captain F. J. Moore, writing to the 

* Monthly Review of the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 
August, 1917, p. 15. 



xii PREFACE 

London Nation about religion in the trenches, 
says that the war has revealed to the world at 
large, and not least to the men themselves, that 
goodness, and not evil, is the *' original'' thing in 
human nature. '^No matter how they drink or 
how they swear, or whatever they do, there is a 
nobler self beneath it all capable of a sacrifice 
like the cross.'' The Literary Digest (Septem- 
ber 15, 1917) sums it up: ** Original sin has been 
replaced by original goodness." (Exit Calvin.) 

Professor Patten proves that we are living in a 
surplus, not in a deficit civilization. Lester Ward 
shows that production increases as the square of 
the hands employed. (Exit Malthus.) 

We find that changed social ideas produce 
changed economic theories. In our time, demo- 
cratic common sense is deciding that human per- 
sonality must be built up, not destroyed, by eco- 
nomic processes ; that wages must serve individual 
welfare and social need. (Exit Adam Smith. 
Enter Jesus.) 

In the midst of this optimism of fact, this opu- 
lence and self -curing power of nature, how pitiable 
those lugubrious but convenient economic theories 
by which men strengthen themselves in tyrannies 
over their fellows or justify riding upon their 
backs! *^Life," says Nietzsche, ^4s that which 
must ever surpass itself." May I dare to offer 
as the method by which life is able to surpass 
itself, the impulse to clarity — to know the mean- 
ing of things — as the pledge of progress. 



CONTENTS 

OHA.PTKR PAOB 

Pbeface vii 

I Domestic Pkoblems and Foreign- 
War 3 

II The Worker's Lost Status and His 

Unrest 17 

III The Working-man and Patriotism . 47 

IV The Americanizing of the Immi- 

grant Worker 61 

V Physical Betterment — the Func- 
tion OF THE State .... 79 
VI Administration of the Law and the 

Worker 105 

VII Unjust Laws and How to Eemedy 

Them 129 

VIII Are Rich Americans Aiding Ameri- 
canization! 161 

IX The Waste of Ignorance and Com- 
petition 187 

X Mental Adjustment Through Or- 
ganized Efforts for Free Speech 207 
XI The Economic Influence of Re- 
ligion 233 

Xn Labor Organization and Its Influ- 
ence ON Our Problems . . . 257 

XIII The Cure for Democracy — **More 

Democracy'' 289 

XIV What the Working-men Want — In- 

dustrial Self-Government . . 309 

Appendix 337 

Bibliography 364 



DOMESTIC PROBLEMS AND 
FOREIGN WAR 



" Great economic and social forces flow with tidal sweep over 
communities only half conscious of that which is befalling them. 
Wise statesmen are those who foresee what time is thus bring- 
ing, and try to shape institutions and to mould men's thought 
and purpose in accordance with the change that is silently sur- 
rounding them." 

Viscount Morley's Recollections, Vol. I., p. 143. 

" There are two aims that to my mind should be steadily kept 
in view, and constantly applied as crucial tests to all schemes 
and proposals which deal with reconstruction. They sound com- 
monplace enough, but they go to the root of the matter. The 
first is that we shall need a largely increased production year 
by year of national Avealth. The second that we must see to it 
that as among the producers there is a fairer distribution of 
the yield." 

Mr. Asquith's War-Aims Speech, December 11, 1917. 



CHAPTER I 

DOMESTIC PROBLEMS AND 
FOREIGN WAR 

ONE of the significant cartoons produced by 
onr declaration of war represents Uncle 
Sam, in the costume of a frontiersman, taking 
down from over the chimney-piece his musket and 
powderhorn, as he remarks: ^*Gosh! I had so 
many other things to do!'' 

These ^* other things'' are home things — Uncle 
Sam's dream of domestic happiness; for he has 
near-by and pressing matters, has Uncle Sam, 
which concern the prosperity and contentment of 
his people. 

Perhaps he was thinking of the exodus of the 
negroes from the South that in volume and eco- 
nomic moment may rank with the great migra- 
tions of history. 

Or, he may have been brooding on the battle 
raging in San Francisco between the labor unions 
and the business interests with their $1,000,000 
war fund — a conflict illuminated by the threat of 
the workers that labor leaders condemned to death 
shall not die. 

Uncle Sam may have had in mind his neglected 

3 



4 FAIE PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

farms, * * Where four-fifths of the area of the large 
holdings/' one of his commissions tells him, *4s 
being kept out of use by their 50,000 large owners, 
while 2,250,000 farmers are struggling for a mere 
existence on farms of less than fifty acres,'* and 
only a little over half of the land on farms is 
improved. 

Or, was Uncle Sam worrying about a wasteful 
nation going to war, adding military destruction 
to its economic destruction which is equal annu- 
ally to the capital of all its banks? 

Did he have before his eyes the vision of addi- 
tions to his huge list of incapacitated — before the 
war a daily **sick list'' of three million out of 
which come half the outcries of American des- 
titution? 

Without doubt the race question, the labor 
question, the land question, conservation and the 
health question, are some of the ** other things" 
that war seemed at first glance to postpone. 

Not only do home matters slide out of minds 
absorbed in the war zone; but patriotic citizens 
feel that domestic problems ought to be forgotten 
during the war as a measure of the nation's sac- 
rifice and also as a means of necessary concen- 
tration for overseas success. 

But we cannot, if we would, leave our domestic 
problems behind us when we join our allies. What 
we are in Europe depends upon what we are in 
America. A foreign war reveals domestic weak- 
nesses. Every man on the firing-line requires 



DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 5 

from four to six persons behind the firing-line 
to keep him supplied. The army is the whole peo- 
ple. If we forget or postpone home problems we 
become bad soldiers in the field. 

The fact is that during the war we must pay- 
more attention than ever to home conditions. 
Every fighting nation has been weakened by labor 
difficulties, and has found itself forced to deal 
inopportunely with the most fundamental social 
and economic questions. By anticipating the 
claims of our own internal problems we 
may save ourselves fatal weakness in a world 
crisis. 

Without a positive social polity, we shall, at 
any rate, be the victims of reactionary attack. 
Already under the guise of war-need the old crew 
which fruitlessly fought liberal laws have be- 
sieged legislatures to destroy recent safeguards 
thrown around the workers. The hours of labor 
for men, women, and children are attacked; the 
length of the school year; the full crew bill; the 
La FoUette Seaman's Act. In the State of New 
York by the permissive shortening of the school 
year the Empire State actually mobilized child 
labor before it mobilized its army. 

Gains in social legislation must not be lost ; they 
are national assets, not class advantages ; they are 
**good business.'' For the labor question is not 
merely an irritating militancy between employer 
and employee, in which the worker occasionally 
wins privileges — recovered perhaps later by the 



6 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

bosses — but having no permanent public signifi- 
cance, no general gain or loss. 

The labor question is concerned with human 
conservation and race effectiveness. The triumph 
of labor is the triumph of humanity in its very 
flesh and blood. A relapse now in labor legisla- 
tion is war^s home harvest in flesh and blood — 
war's preventable losses behind the firing-line. 
Consequently, any retreat during the time of war 
into older and restricted economic usages, is not 
only a matter of dangerous precedent to labor— 
the setting aside perhaps for years of its hard- 
won verdict — but it is a dangerous prerogative 
resumed by capital upon an utter misunderstand- 
ing of the labor problem. 

Centralization Demands Transformation 

There are other reasons why during the war we 
cannot escape the consideration of domestic prob- 
lems. The centralization necessary in war time 
for intensive national life means automatically 
much domestic tr.^sformation, especially in an 
individualistic country like America. To accom- 
plish successfully this socializing of our citizens 
will demand sympathetic and profound study of 
the domestic situation. Secretary Lane's remark 
to coal operators in Washington, in June, 1917, 
is not to American ears axiomatic and will require 
elucidation and cogitation. *^To be an American 
citizen today is not to have the right to make a 



DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 7 

million dollars, but the right to live up to the 
demands of democratic ideals, and to sacrifice 
for iV 

Shall we not also discover like the other fighting 
nations that the minds of the soldiers at the front 
turn backward upon the domestic situation ? They 
have time in the trenches to think. Their thought 
on the whole has been revolutionary. The men 
who are fighting in France are asking searching 
questions about religion, politics, business — about 
their own futures, — which forebode social recon- 
struction. They are revolving fundamental prob- 
lems. Such mental ferment among the soldiers 
themselves, prophesies domestic change. 

Two of our allies, Russia and France, are prob- 
ably more advanced than we are in democratic 
ideals. A new light upon home problems is likely 
to dawn upon American soldiers when they learn 
from observation the radical economic views of 
the French, to say nothing of the more influential 
political position held by the English working- 
classes. Our armies will return home more criti- 
cal of our way of doing things than when they 
left our shores. Won't it be well for us — the 
home-stayers — to try to keep pace in our devel- 
opment with the men at the front? 

There is also the reflex action upon industrial 
and political organization of the new relationship 
between officers and men in our proposed gigantic 
armies — a more democratic relationship. In the 



8 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

English army Donald Hankey saw a new democ- 
racy developed from the confidence that officers 
and men learned to have in each other. He be- 
lieved that a better spirit between employers and 
employees will be produced as a result of this war- 
time experience. The ordinary labor conditions 
in which the employer complains of his men as 
being ungrateful and the men are suspicious of 
their employers as being exploiters, may be modi- 
fied in the future by a new human relationship 
of mutual sympathy and dependence, like the con- 
fidence and pride felt for each other by officers 
and men in the face of a powerful enemy. 

Schooled by war this new working democracy 
which embodies discipline and authority, which 
at all hazards must create efficiency, mutual help, 
and high spirit, may make a decided contribution 
to the industrial peace of the future when armies, 
so inspired, are again scattered through the 
nation's economic organization. 

America Is in the Rapids of Social. Revolution 

But it is a waste of time to marshal reasons 
for paying special attention during the war to 
domestic conditions, as though what is done in 
America depended upon argument. As a matter 
of fact, social revolution has overtaken the do- 
mestic affairs of the warring nations. Mr. 
Stephen McKenna, nephew of the former Chan- 
cellor of the Exchequer, said in an interview in 



DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 9 

New York the middle of May, 1917 : '^ England has 
had changes amounting in effect to a social revolu- 
tion as the result of the war and America will 
probably experience much the same thing.'' 

America by going to war has entered the rapids 
of social revolution and must eventually come out 
into the intense liberalism of awakening Europe. 
Who knows! If America makes haste to learn 
what Europe can teach, she may perhaps be saved 
dislocation of her own. 

The difficulty with radical change in America 
is that it has not been foreshadowed by general 
sympathetic attention. We have not had the same 
historical or pressing reasons that Europe has 
had for social analysis and criticism. For in- 
stance, we have not in America experienced in 
an impressive way the feudal system, or since our 
independence had a hereditary ruler. We have 
not had the problems incident to powerful politi- 
cal neighbors with boundless national ambi- 
tions to force us either to farsighted diplomacy 
or to an internal defensive organization. We have 
not had serious social or religious disturbances; 
or we have blindly or good-naturedly ignored 
them. 

Even the problems that we share in common 
with Europe have been largely banished as 
incredible in our idealistic republic. We have 
claimed to have no class distinctions. We have 
treated capitalism as a finality, not as a stepping 
stone on the road of general progress. We 



10 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

have supposed political democracy to be the limit 
of democracy and we have fancied America 
Jiors concours in any exhibit of free institutions. 
Any criticism of America's brand of democracy is 
resented as an insult to the flag. Any suggestion 
as to betterment seems a slap in the face to the 
successful American — his courage, his initiative — 
and consequently merely a scheme for putting 
beggars on horseback. 

Nor are we prepared to sympathize with 
Europe's awakening liberalism, by parallel eco- 
nomic studies of our own. In our war prepara- 
tion, so far, we have gone against American in- 
dividualistic traditions because we have largely 
followed France and England. In so doing we 
are governed by practical considerations and do 
not understand the economic implications of our 
war socialization. We cannot, therefore, be too 
well informed about our domestic problems or 
consider them too much at this time. Not only are 
they very much a part of our war success, but 
at the conclusion of the war, social readjustments 
can only be accomplished smoothly by a new in- 
telligence as to their principles and bearing. 

The National and Social Conflicts 

We must finally remember that there are two 
conflicts going on at the same time — a conflict of 
nations and a conflict of classes — the international 
conflict and the social conflict. The social conflict 



DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 11 

will not call a truce during the national conflict 
because it cannot. This social conflict is not pro- 
jected by a nameless unrest but by the vital urge 
of existence in the actual affairs of daily life which 
demands of every man that he secure for him- 
self and his family all possible opportunity for 
growth, which will be his contribution to race 
progress. 

On deeper analysis it will be found that these 
two conflicts — the social and the national — are 
one; that they are at bottom economic and have 
to do with ideals for larger human betterment. 
Feudalism, autocracy, militarism, imperialism, 
democracy, are methods of organization for se- 
curing human advantage. America is backing the 
proposition that in the world of today democracy 
is of wider, richer advantage to mankind than pre- 
ceding forms of racial or national organization. 
We are further undertaking to prove that, after 
all, the highest loyalty is not a man^s loyalty to 
the person of a prince, but his loyalty to his 
brother-man and to the principles of fellowship. 

We cannot keep the inner and the outer apart 
in government any more than we can in people. 
Attention to domestic problems becomes more ex- 
cited in times of war, which is like the hand on 
a kaleidoscope, turning things as we look, into 
new arrangement. Run over in your mind for a 
moment some of the internal changes the war has 
produced. 

A change in the modern industrial system has 



12 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

been supposed to be so infinitely difficult and haz- 
ardous that it could only be compassed slowly and 
even if soon begun could only after generations 
be consummated. 

English economists are surprised at the short 
time required to change their industrial organiza- 
tion from individual to governmental manage- 
ment and from industrial to military production. 
^*In an extraordinarily short time/' says Profes- 
sor Pigou, *^the business and industrial commu- 
nity has changed front and altered its formation 
in conformity with new conditions. '^ 

War has brought Europe greater efficiency in 
railroading by government management; it has 
made of production, conservation, and distribu- 
tion, once a speculation, a mathematical problem; 
it has increased skilled labor and brought up into 
the ranks of thrifty toil classes thrown into 
crime by unemployment; it has shown clearly 
that long hours and bad sanitation for laboring 
men, women, and children lessen production, de- 
stroy physique, and are ^^bad business''; it has 
shown that the safety of the state depends upon 
the loyalty and intelligent co-operation of labor; 
it has put new value upon large families ; upon the 
working-class, and upon youth. In short, every 
function that nineteenth-century political liberal- 
ism claimed must be left to the individual in order 
to insure national well-being, has, during the war, 
been assumed and has been administered success- 
fully by the state. 



DOMESTIC PROBLEMS 13 

A notable aspect of the Great War is the extent 
to which the countries engaged are officially and 
unofficially making preparations for peace, — ^mer- 
cantile, industrial, political preparation — not in 
order to bring about peace but, when peace is de- 
clared, to start the race anew in better condition. 
While at war the nations are training for peace. 
In England innumerable committees, govern- 
mental and private, are canvassing the wages, 
organizations, and housing of labor and how to 
associate it with government as never before. In 
America we did not like the maxim ^4n time of 
peace prepare for war.'' Why not, then, adopt 
the new maxim **In time of war prepare for 
peace"? 



II 



THE WORKER'S LOST STATUS 
AND HIS UNREST 



"A nation habituated to think in terms of problems and 
of the struggle to remedy them before it is actually in the grip 
of the forces which create the problems, would have an equip- 
ment for public life such as has not characterized any people." 

John Dewey, 
The New Republic, May 6, 1916, p. 16. 

And therefore today is thrilling 
With a past day's late fulfilling; 

And the multitudes are enlisted 

In the faith that their fathers resisted. 
And scorning the dream of tomorrow. 

And bringing to pass, as they may. 
In the world, for its joy or its sorrow, 

The dream that was scorned yesterday. 

Arthur O'Shaughnessy. 

" In every government the laws of education ought to be in 
relation to the principles of that government." 

Montesquieu, 
Democracy in America, Book IV. 

" The more one sees of this war, the more one is inclined to 
the belief that its real significance lies behind the battle lines 
rather than on them." 

" The inner significance of this war has to do with the emanci- 
pation of labor, just as the inner significance of that of a hun- 
dred years ago had to do with the emancipation of the shop- 
keeper — ^who has since become a plutocrat! " 

From " Unrest Behind the Lines," 
Winston Churchill, 
N. Y. Times Magazine, December 2, 1917. 



CHAPTER II 

THE WORKER'S LOST STATUS AND 
HIS UNREST 

ONE danger that threatens our democracy is 
our ignorance about its problems. This 
dangerous ignorance is due to many causes. The 
eighteenth-century doctrinaire notion that de- 
mocracy means a return to nature and therefore 
to a simpler and easier social organization: the 
misleading assumption from our Declaration of 
Independence, that the maintenance of personal 
political freedom is a sufficient aim of the state: 
our unwillingness to recognize economic neces- 
sity as an undercurrent in social and political 
matters : our obstinate insistence that America 
contained no classes when it is of the very nature 
of economic development to stratify society: the 
control of our press and its censorship of un- 
pleasant industrial facts: the suppression in 
universities of economic liberalism: the absence 
among our student bodies of vital attention to 
current industrial problems, — all of these Ameri- 
can characteristics have contributed to democ- 
racy's ignorance of its own problems. 

There are, however, direct sources of fresh and 

17 



18 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

reliable information from which the public should 
hear. One of these is the conservative labor 
press, which prints careful and full accounts of 
labor conditions, strikes, and court proceedings.* 
Another is the social worker, generally a college 
graduate, who is in and out of the families of the 
poor. Another is the missionary, who usually has 
years of experience in a special locality and is 
its expert. Another is the Open Forum, where 
eager-minded working-people — students of social 
problems — discuss them with a knowledge and 
an oratorical power which often paralyzes and 
silences their opponents of the educated classes. 
The condition and need of America as re- 
vealed by such sources of information are alarm- 
ingly different from the generally conceived pic- 
ture; they largely account for the radicalism of 
social workers, many clergymen, and some col- 
lege professors, as well as the secret revolt of 
many employees in the financial districts of our 
great cities. 

A Republic Demands Omniscience 

A republic, as a self-governing state, must de- 
mand of its sovereign citizens something of that 
omniscience we used to laugh about as imper- 
sonated in the Kaiser and Mr. Roosevelt. For 
an American citizen it is a moment of startled 
awakening when he becomes alive to the fact that 

* For a list of labor newspapers, etc., see Appendix. 



LOST STATUS AND UNREST 19 

if the republic is to last he must in very truth be 
sovereign. This he cannot be without an educa- 
tion in the subjects upon which democratic se- 
curity depends. For instance, he must be better 
educated in the history of economics if he is to 
reply successfully to those discontented voices 
heard asserting, since we published our idealistic 
reasons for going to war, that there is more 
democracy in Europe than in America. 

The National Economic League's program for 
1917 contained a list of subjects for special consid- 
eration arranged in an order of importance indi- 
cated by the preferential votes of its members. 
There were forty-one subjects and on an average 
half a dozen sub-topics under each head. Here, 
then, are two hundred and fifty subjects of impera- 
tive importance for Americans. Let me name a 
few to test the reader's readiness upon vital cur- 
rent problems. 

1. National Defense (Preparedness (Military, Na- 
val, Economic, Financial, Industrial, Commercial, So- 
cial). Universal Compulsory Military Training and 
Service. Limitation of Armaments. Disarmament, etc. 
The Peril of Militarism). 

2. International Peace (Enforcement of Peace, In- 
ternational Organization to Maintain Peace, the 
League to Enforce Peace, Peace Terms, Promoting In- 
ternational Friendship, the True Basis of Lasting 
Peace, etc.). 

3. International Relations (America's Foreign Pol- 
icy, the Monroe Doctrine, Our Relations with South 



20 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

America and the Orient. America's Rights and Ob- 
ligations. The Problem of Mexico). 

4. American Merchant Marine (American Shipping 
Laws). 

5. Labor Problem (Relation Between Employers 
and Workmen, Labor and Capital, Strikes, Wages, 
Hours, Unemployment, Poverty). 

6. Education (the Public Schools, a National Sys- 
tem of Education. Ethical, Religious, Civic, and Moral 
Training in Public Schools. The Press. Motion Pic- 
tures). 

7. Conservation (Conservation and Development of 
Natural Resources, Economic Wastes, Conservation of 
Human Life, Public Health, Industrial and Personal 
Efficiency, Conservation of the Public Interests). 

8. Efficiency and Economy in Government (Reform 
of Federal Finance Through Budget Control. Exces- 
sive Appropriations for Post Office Buildings. Pre- 
paredness). 

9. Administration of Justice (Law Reform. The 
Judiciary. The Encroachment of the Legislative upon 
the Judicial Department of Government. Separation 
of Politics from the Judiciary). 

10. Taxation and Tax Reforms (National, State, 
Municipal, Taxation of Land Values, Incomes and In- 
heritances, etc.). 

How many high school boys, or even college 
graduates, could secure a mark of fifty per cent, 
if examined on these questions ? 

The National Economic League's study pro- 
gram for 1918 is even more difficult. 



LOST STATUS AND UNREST 21 

Employers '* Forget'' the Human Element 

Little attempt seems to be made by employers 
in America to understand either the human ele- 
ment or the economic problems involved in the 
labor movement. The whole matter is ** unrest'' ; 
the only way out is for capital to stand pat. Mr. 
Theodore Shonts, President of the Interborough 
Railroad Company of New York, addressed as 
follows the students of Drake University, Iowa, 
June 12, 1912: 

*'The spirit of unrest is abroad. It is a universal 
sign of the times. Nor is it confined to this land alone ; 
it is world-wide. That country is no longer considered 
the best governed which governs the least. The cry 
is for universal governmental activity. Whether it be 
called socialism, collectivism, communism, municipal 
operation, or government ownership, the result is the 
same. The community itself must run the individual 
and provide for his wants while the individual sinks 
into a helpless unit, incapable of upholding the stabil- 
ity of the very government wMch he designs to nourish 
his common wants." 

Members of the State Factory Investigation 
Committee of New York openly declared from 
public platforms that ^4n the factories of the city 
and State the human element is pretty much for- 
gotten. ' ' But this is just the field labor wishes to 
control — not the mercantile but the human. 

An astounding illustration of the forgetfulness 
by business men of the human side of their under- 



22 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

takings came to light in connection with our 
shipbuilding program. Hundreds of millions of 
dollars were appropriated; great contracts were 
signed; shipyards were built or enlarged — but no 
ships were forthcoming. Those responsible for 
all this outlay, it was discovered, had not thought 
it worth while to provide housing for the laborers 
who were to give life to this enormous stagnant 
investment. 

The significance of labor's unrest is far-reach- 
ing. It does not mean merely that labor believes 
itself entitled to a larger share of production and 
to better sanitary shop and home conditions; 
labor's unrest means that modern industrial life 
was organized without taking into account what 
the worker had to say about it and that in con- 
sequence we have a broken-winged industrial 
machine and a deceptive political order. 

The Rise of the Proletaeiat 

Feudalism gave the serf food, shelter, and cloth- 
ing in exchange for his labor and his military 
service. The serf had his stated place. He was 
a small partner in the concern and shared its 
profits. The wage system gives the laborer noth- 
' ing but the right to compete for a job. In times of 
war the state can take over the worker's indus- 
trial or military services ; but in times of peace it 
does not insure him subsistence. The worker is 
merely an economic buffer between the comfort- 



LOST STATUS AND UNREST 23 

able classes and any tightening of economic pres- 
sure, — that is to say, bad times and starvation. 
He is the sop thrown to the Cerberus of capital- 
istic mismanagement. When things go wrong and 
hard times come, a few million laborers are thrown 
out of work and their families are put on short 
rations, which often means on none at all, until 
by this means business has saved enough and 
thrift, the semi-starvation of those still working, 
has put by enough for a new speculative drive. 
Eadical workers call themselves **wage slaves.'' 

To be able to give sympathetic attention to 
the labor question one should be acquainted not 
only with the present-day facts which make a 
strong sentimental appeal, but with character- 
istic legislation in England and America after 
the Industrial Revolution of the last half of the 
eighteenth century. Still further back he should 
see the source from which the modern prole- 
tariat is originally derived in the break-up of 
feudalism, the discovery of America, the expro- 
priation of guilds and of estates by new politi- 
cal power after the Reformation. 

Such a look backward is far from an aca- 
demic treatment of our subject ; it shows the servile 
history of labor ; it discloses centuries of momen- 
tum behind the labor movement; it reveals mis- 
fortunes that one portion of the community should 
not bear alone; it confirms the impossibility of a 
return into older and more autocratic forms. 

King Canute sweeping back the tide is a pic- 



24 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

ture of an industrial magnate that thinks to 
stay by force the creeping tide of proletarian 
advance which has gained in mass and momen- 
tum for at least five hundred years. 

The word proletariat — discordant, with good 
right, to American ears — must, after all, be con- 
sidered not as a name for a vague and small 
body of sophisticated malcontents in the labor 
movement, but for a great army upon a long 
and patient march. 

In England from the Conquest onward for 
nearly three hundred years there was, in our 
sense of the word, no labor problem. In England 
the guild system with its apprentices, journey- 
men, and master craftsmen, did not develop large 
bodies of workmen. A journeyman could easily 
set up for himself after his apprenticeship and 
become a master craftsman, take into his house 
an apprentice or two, or a young journeyman 
or two. At any rate, the size of his domestic 
quarters and afterwards law limited the labor 
groups. He could not employ women except his 
wife or his daughters and there was no night 
work. 

** There were, therefore,*' says Professor Ash- 
ley, **no collisions between * capital and labor,' 
though there might be occasional quarrels be- 
tween individuals. The hard-working journey- 
man expected to be able in a few years to be- 
come an independent master; and while he re- 
mained a journeyman there was no social guK 



LOST STATUS AND UNREST 25 

between himself and his employer. They worked 
in the same shop, side by side, and the servant 
probably earned at least half as much as his 
master.'' * 

Nor was speculation allowed to advance prices 
and so reduce the purchasing value of the work- 
man's earnings. Professor Ashley quotes a 
graphic illustration of the community's pro- 
tection of itself: * * John-at-Wood, baker, was 
charged before the common sergeant with the 
following offense: * Whereas one Robert de 
Cawode had two quarters of wheat for sale in 
common market on the Pavement within New- 
gate, he, the said John, cunningly and by secret 
words whispering in his ear, fraudulently with- 
drew Cawode out of the common market; and 
they went together into the Church of the Friars 
Minor, and there John bought the two quarters 
at 15^d. per bushel, being 2i/2d. over the com- 
mon selling price at that time in the market; 
to the great loss and deceit of the common peo- 
ple, and to the increase of the dearness of 
com.' At- Wood denied the offense, and *put 
himself on the country.' Thereupon a jury of 
the venue of Newgate was empaneled, who gave 
as verdict that At- Wood had not only thus 
bought the corn, but had afterwards returned 
to the market, and boasted of his misdoing; 
Hhis he said and did to increase the dearness 
of corn.' Accordingly he was sentenced to be 

* " Economic History and Theory," W. J. Ashley, p. 94. 



26 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

put into the pillory for three hours, and one of 
the sheriffs was directed to see the sentence 
executed and proclamation made of the cause 
of his punishment/' * 

A ^4abor class'' appeared in England as early 
as the middle of the fourteenth century. Among 
artificers there were men who could not look for- 
ward to being master craftsmen, owing to the 
superfluity of labor and the growing power of 
capital. Landlords, too, changed tillage to pas- 
ture and turned families off the land. The '^ work- 
ing-class" and the *' labor question" are consid- 
erations that had to be dealt with in England by 
legislation as early as 1450, from which time the 
seriousness of the problem has increased. 

i i Through the breaking up of the feudal houses 
with their numerous retainers," says Kirkup, 
** through the transformation of the old peasant- 
holdings into extensive sheep-runs and generally 
through the prevalent application of the com- 
mercial system to the management of the land, 
instead of the Catholic and feudal spirit, the 
peasantry were driven off the land; a multitude 
of people, totally destitute of property, were 
thrown loose from their old means of livelihood 
and were reduced to vagabondage or forced into 
towns. It was in this way that the modern prole- 
tariat made their tragic entry into history." f 

The Industrial Revolution increased the ranks 

*" Economic History and Theory," W. J. Ashley, p. 184. 
t"A History of Socialism," Thomas Kirkup, p. 133. 



LOST STATUS AND UNREST 27 

of the proletariat. The steam engine, the power 
loom, the spinning jenny, and the cotton gin 
developed a factory system which took the tools 
of production out of the hands of the workers 
and put machinery, capital, and its combination 
into the hands of the masters. The public tur- 
bulence and multiplication of crimes incident to 
this economic change can be judged by the in- 
creasing number of offenses which in England 
was visited with capital punishment from 1750- 
1799. At the end of the century there were 200. 
In the same year that England had so great a 
number of capital otfenses she forbade labor to 
combine. In the year she refused to repeal a law 
which hanged an apprentice for stealing four shil- 
lings from his master, England deprived the 
laborer of old usages that mitigated wage griev- 
ances. Into the proletarian army were flung men, 
women, and children of old cottage industries. 
Poorhouse children were contracted for and sold 
like cattle. 

The French Revolution and the English Reform 
Bill did not emancipate the workers. These were 
revolutions of the capitalistic and mercantile 
classes against the control of feudal lords and 
the clergy — they were bourgeois advantages, not 
proletarian. The people were left out. 

The Communistic Manifesto of 1848 and the 
repeal in 1871 of the English laws against combi- 
nations of workmen can be considered dates which 
mark the rise of the modern labor movement in 



28 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

Germany and England — that is, the definite and 
intelligent determination of the modern working- 
classes to secure industrial power, to become an 
integral part — in fact, a partner — in the modern 
business organization. 

Is it a wonder that the proletariat, these work- 
ers, outcasts from the regard and care of the pow- 
erful, should be somewhat indifferent to any na- 
tionalism that opposes socializing the state? 
**That,'' as August Boeckh and Lassalle taught, 
**we must widen our notion of the state so as to 
believe that the state is the institution in which the 
whole virtue of humanity should be realized. ' ' 

WOBKING-MEN MuST CoMBINE 

The labor question appears in a new light the 
moment one sees that an individual working- 
man is no match, in bargaining, for a corpora- 
tion; that is to say, no match for the expert 
financiers and lawyers who generally represent 
important corporations. Even in his home the 
working-man is not much of a financier; for he 
leaves the spending of his money, as do the other 
wage-earners of the family, to the wife and 
mother who is the family treasurer and bar- 
gainer. 

Working-men must combine, at any rate, for 
collective bargaining; and this combination, once 
effected, leads to a use of trade-unions in many 
beneficial directions. 



LOST STATUS AND UNREST 29 

In spite of the industrial feebleness of the in- 
dividual working-man, English and American 
laws have not encouraged combinations of labor. 
Labor has been discouraged; capital has been en- 
couraged. In 1799 in England, a law was passed 
forbidding working-men to organize for any pur- 
pose. In 1813 an English law, which had per- 
mitted justices of the peace to raise wages in a 
certain list of occupations when in their opinion 
conditions warranted such increase, was re- 
pealed. In 1814, the apprenticeship adjustment 
of labor standards was done away with, *4abor 
being then left without any measure of protec- 
tion at all.''* 

The effect of these laws was to reduce the 
earning power of men and consequently to in- 
crease the number of women and children forced 
into English industries. This happened at a time 
when steam power and the new factory system 
were destroying domestic occupations. The re- 
sult was that mills, running as many as fifteen 
hours a day, collected men, women, and children 
under one roof, where unwholesome conditions 
helped to lay the foundation for the wretched 
physique, ignorance, and slum life which one 
hundred years of English philanthropy have not 
corrected. *^Only after twenty-five years of 
agitation were the hours of a child of nine in the 
factory limited to sixty-nine a week by the law 
of 1825. ' ' f The uncontrolled and misunderstood 

*D. H, Macgregor, "The Evolution of Industry," p. 65. 
t Ibid., p. 66. 



'30 PAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

growth of cities assisted the industrial forces 
destructive to human health. 

In spite of the enlargement of the English 
franchise, English working-men did not receive, in 
their attempts at self-help, much political assist- 
ance until 1869. Combinations of working-men 
were illegal if not criminal. It was not until well 
into the present century that a parliamentary com- 
mittee reported favorably on trade-unionism and 
even recommended its encouragement. 

In the United States, the first use of combination 
by the workers was for specific and temporary 
purposes. Opposition to these early, sporadic 
but successful strikes was marked by the first trial 
of journeymen for conspiracy in 1806. After this 
for nearly a quarter of a century American labor 
organizations had to exist under the guise of 
secret and benefit societies. Only when the work- 
ing-men's societies, founded in the various trades, 
came together and formed a representative body 
did they have the power openly to brave the op- 
position of the employers. The first trade-union 
in America, organized in Philadelphia in 1827, 
antedated the first English organization by two 
years. 

In America, the working-man, in his efforts 
toward wider industrial influence through trade- 
unionism, is still fought directly and indirectly by 
his employer. Labor organizations are fought 
secretly and publicly by employers' associations. 

Capital, in England, was not only strength- 



LOST STATUS AND UNREST 31 

ened by the acts which weakened labor, but by 
direct legislation — as, for instance, the Joint Stock 
Acts, from 1844-1862. Owners of small capital 
were given the right to combine and at the same 
time a limited liability. 

The Workingman Has Been Disfranchised 
Industrially 

The result of these laws which repress the 
natural effort of labor in its own behalf, taken 
together with the economic theory that labor is 
nothing but a commodity under the laws of sup- 
ply and demand, have destroyed the former 
status possessed by the toiler under feudalism. 
The modern contract idea of his relationship to 
industry has not restored him to an integral 
place in our social economy. In the light of this 
displacement of the working-man, as a factor in 
the real control of the modern system, must be 
viewed his conscious or unconscious striving for 
a ^^say'^ in the industrial management of his 
job. For he will not get back into the position 
he has lost until his voice has a recognized legal 
place in the industrial organization of his time. 
This is the explanation of his unrest — he has lost 
his economic equilibrium and is frantically trying 
to regain it. Some of his artless assumptions, so 
ridiculous to the capitalistic class, so exasperating 
to the public, so troublesome to the police and the 
courts, are pathetic attempts to recapture his lost 
status. For instance, when on strike, he will not 



32 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

permit a non-union man to accept the job he left. 
A non-union man who acts as a strike-breaker is 
'* disloyal to the working-class/* is ^^a traitor,'* 
**a scab.** The union man has a theory that the 
job belongs to him whether he is working at it 
or not: that if he strike, the job must be left 
open pending the union's settlement of the dis- 
pute. His demands for shop committees before 
whom a question involving the dismissal of 
working-men must come, and all other methods 
of asserting his influence over a given industry, 
to say nothing of the legislation he fights for, are 
only the efforts of a class outside the breastworks 
of economic control to gain re-admittance. In 
short, the working-man of today has been robbed, 
by the modern commercial and factory system, of 
what may be called his industrial franchise pos- 
sessed under an earlier system; he agitates and 
strikes to recover industrial enfranchisement. 

Philanthropy Cannot Remedy Social Mal- 
adjustment 

Meanwhile the ills incident to this subjugation 
of the working-class have been ameliorated by 
philanthropy, which appeals to the rich not only 
as an expression of noblesse oblige, but as an 
obligation and custom of Christianity. 

But philanthropy is practically played out. 
Needs multiply faster than the philanthropic 
funds. The increase of philanthropic institu- 
tions adds to their inefficiency. Philanthropic so- 



LOST STATUS AND UNREST 33 

cieties spring up like mushrooms over night. 
Volunteer associations without number exist in 
churches, synagogues, settlements, unofficially in 
the army and navy, and in associations of teach- 
ers, firemen, policemen. They are so numer- 
ous that they tread upon each other. The Chari- 
ties Directory of New York State contains 458 
pages of closely printed matter. Nothing needs 
more co-ordination and reorganization than our 
philanthropies. Mr. Wilbur C. Phillips' ''Unit'' 
system, now being tried out in Cincinnati, hopes 
to affect this needed unification. But complete 
reorganization would mean assimilation with the 
industrial order, — ^nothing less than the destruc- 
tion of philanthropy as such and the emergence 
of its expected benefits by means of higher social 
justice. Every increase in philanthropic machin- 
ery delays the natural tendency in democracy to 
take upon itself responsibility for unfortunate 
conditions incident to its existence. Social mal- 
adjustment cannot be remedied by personal gra- 
tuities. In serious crises philanthropy breaks 
down and acknowledges defeat. For example, in 
its attempt to deal with the unemployed in the 
winter of 1913, and its response to hungry women 
and children in the spring of 1917. Democracy 
must bear the expenses of its own accidents. 
There is another reason for the collapse of 
philanthropy. Charity does not return to the 
worker that part of the value of his labor which 
is taken from him by the exploitation of capital. 



34 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

The surplus profit, which goes not to his pocket 
but to that of the employer, is often dissipated 
by extravagance and waste. A pitiably small 
percentage of this surplus profit returns, in the 
form of philanthropy, to the workers, who, to 
make both ends meet, should have received it in 
the first place as a just recompense of their toil. 
The draining off of the value given by labor to 
material; the destruction of much of this value 
and the return of very little of it as philanthropy, 
increases the condition of destitution faster than 
philanthropic funds can possibly meet the need. 
Philanthropic distribution is always smaller than 
wage inadequacy. 

**Get off Ouk Backs" 

In addition to this inevitable and increasing 
disparity between the classes due to the wage 
system, we must remember that in the last twenty 
years, in fact, up to the beginning of the war, 
while money wages had somewhat increased, 
their purchasing power had diminished to such 
an extent that real wages had dropped. More- 
over, according to the United States census, the 
ratio between production and wasteful competi- 
tion has been widening, which means that the ma- 
jority of the country have been more and more 
living on the productive energies of the minority 
of the country. 

This situation explains the outcry of working- 



I 



LOST STATUS AND UNREST 35 

men to idle capitalists, '^Get off our backs." The 
struggle of the working-class to bear this bur- 
den of the privileged class naturally has its limit, 
as all strength has its limit. It is only a question 
of time, then, when the space between great for- 
tunes and working-man's income will represent 
such a disparity as to be intolerable. Less than 
one-half of one per cent, of the population in 
1915 had an income of over $3,000 a year. ^^The 
wage rates of four-fifths of the males fall below 
$750; a third below $500.''* 

The Bureau of Personal Service of the Board 
of Estimate in New York reported to Mayor 
Mitchel the minimum on which a family of five 
could live in New York in 1917 as being $980, 
compared with $840 in 1915. 

The report, signed by George L. Tirrell, di- 
rector of the Bureau, classified the objects of ex- 
penditure into eight standard groups with the 
following expenditure allotment: 

1915 1917 

Housing $168.00 $168.00 

Carfare 30.30 30.30 

Food 383.812 492.388 

Clothing 104.20 127.10 

Fuel and Light 42.75 46.75 

Health 20.00 20.00 

Insurance 22.88 22.88 

Sundries 73.00 73.00 

Total per year. . $844,942 $980,418 
* Scott Nearing, " Income," p. 106. Published in 1915, 



36 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

The sundries are classified as follows: Papers 
and other reading matter, $5; recreation, $40; 
furniture, moving expenses, etc., $18; church 
dues, $5; and incidentals, soap, washing mate- 
rials, stamps, etc., $5. 

The estimates are made for a man, his wife, a 
boy thirteen years old, a girl ten years old, and a 
boy six years old. 

Of the housing situation the report says : 

*'A family of five needs at least four rooms to meet 
the demands of decency. Kent in the tenement dis- 
tricts at present as in 1915, according to the statements 
of real estate men, averages $4 per room per month.'' 

Of course, it is to be remembered that at any 
time the cost of living in New York is higher than 
in any other part of the country. Estimates for 
other sections made by competent committees 
place the many requirements to support a family 
of five in time of peace as low as $750, or even 
$680. The more significant fact, however, is that 
four-fifths of our male industrial workers in nor- 
mal times do not receive enough to meet the ex- 
penses of their families upon a basis of even 
$750. 

A New Tendency — Personality Fixes Wages 

The tendency today, therefore, in fixing wages 
is to depend upon a new idea — the theory of per- 
sonal values and the need of the individual for 



LOST STATUS AND UNREST 37 

such income as shall produce the normal devel- 
opment of personality. This standard of wages 
is surely a far cry from labor as a commodity 
or from the iron laws of wages — even from sup- 
ply and demand that for generations operated 
in England and America. It substitutes intelli- 
gent provision in place of the laissez faire doc- 
trine which maintains that as each individual 
benefited himself by the exercise of intense but 
enlightened industrial selfishness, he was also 
benefiting mankind. Now the question is, How 
do wages affect personality? Under the old 
theory of wages the slum was as natural as the 
hills ; under the new theory the slum is hell. 

The proletarian is sneered at for the number 
of children who see the light of day in his family. 
In fact, the word proletarian in its original sig- 
nificance means a person who has nothing else to 
bequeath to the state except children {proles 
means offspring or progeny). On the other 
hand, in a time of war or economic emergency, 
the state turns to the working-class and to their 
children in almost an agony of fear, to compare 
the nation's man and woman power with that 
of its enemies or competitors. 

The bearing of children should be treated with 
enough respect by a community whose life de- 
pends upon it to accord to parents at least hon- 
orable mention, and to bestow upon children the 
best physical, mental, and industrial equipment. 
At present, the industrial army, which we have 



38 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

discovered must supply in time of war the mili- 
tary establishment in the field, is left to wallow. 



Peace Depends upon the Pkoletaeiat 

Pair play for the worker — which is nothing but 
social justice — goes even further than advantage 
to the state. It is the basis of international 
peace. No league to enforce peace can be suc- 
cessful when the nations concerned have vastly 
different forms of government. This is the dif- 
ficulty with a federation of nations which con- 
tain conflicting forms of organization. Imagine 
a United States of Europe with their present 
governments. There is no common denominator. 
Sultan, kaiser, emperor, or king will always have 
dynastic ambitions and immediate family plans 
which will be supreme guides to conduct rather 
than the interests of his subjects. Nor can 
monarchical programs, continually asserting and 
protecting their prerogatives, match popular in- 
dustrial needs. Instead of industrial justice, the 
hereditary monarch will offer makeshift meas- 
ures to dilute current difficulties and postpone 
the fundamental solution of deep social problems. 

Lord Bryce himself sees for Germany no en- 
during peace until the people change their gov- 
ernment. The historian of the Roman Empire 
can see peace in Europe only when ambition to 
reanimate that imperial idea has perished. 

There can be no permanent peace between ab- 



LOST STATUS AND UNREST 39^ 

solute government and popular government. 
Democracy can make no reliable alliance with 
monarchs even when they are hard-working. 
Everything in civilized countries today, therefore, 
depends upon the proletariat. Permanent peace 
among European nations can only be brought 
about when the people overthrow their hereditary 
rulers. Democracies, at any rate, can understand 
each other, better than they can understand mon- 
archies or than monarchies can understand them. 
One cannot, however, shut his eyes to the 
fact that after monarchical government is abol- 
ished and political democracy established, there 
still remain within political democracy the 
problems and dangers of capitalism and pluto- 
cratic control. But even these can be more in- 
telligently faced and more readily met when the 
entire attention of civilization is concentrated 
upon them and is not diverted or beguiled by the 
problem of hereditary rule. 

A Growing Reaction Against Democracy 

In the face of these reasons I have mentioned 
for greater industrial justice, for fair play for 
the worker, we have in this country a growing 
reaction against democracy. Perhaps this can 
be indicated by an editorial in the New York 
Times, before we entered the war, which charac- 
terizes the efforts of working-people to secure 
opportunities for expressing their views and for 



40 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

studying questions that vitally concern their wel- 
fare as '*a tremendous pother about free speech'* : 

*'If community forums are to be set up, the responsi- 
ble part of the community must have a hand in them. ' ' 
They must not be left to the '* circulators of perilous 
or crazed opinion/' 

— what opinions are perilous or crazed being the 
very point at issue and the object of debate. 

The universities as well as the press are re- 
actionary. An able article in the New Republic 
(Feb. 17, 1917), signed ^^A Professor/' and dis- 
cussing the subject of faculty meetings, says: 

''Majority vote is almost always reactionary. Dis- 
carded theories and practices hold sway longest in 
faculty gatherings. . . . Dogmatizing becomes the 
rule." 

The universities in denying platforms to radi- 
cal speakers are intensifying the mistakes of 
their curriculums. They might, at least, allow 
radical criticism to arouse in their students ques- 
tions never so easily answered as while under 
the college discipline of intellectual attention, 
when close at hand are some of the greatest liv- 
ing authorities to guide students to answers 
which are historically and scientifically approved. 

Educational opportunities are insulted when 
students are not permitted to discuss social 
questions until after college days, when in the 



LOST STATUS AND UNREST 41 

stress of business and politics they are brought 
face to face with grave problems they were never 
introduced to in the classroom, which they must 
settle alone, one at a time, when, perhaps, per- 
sonal and national welfare are at stake. 

To doubt the ability of the people to make con- 
tribution to any discussion of current questions 
is to be ignorant of the mind of the people and 
of their ability. Groups of working-men that I 
meet are vastly cleverer than the average college 
graduate in the marshaling of facts, in the pow- 
ers of statement, and in vivid speech. The col- 
leges can well be warned that if they do not give 
another turn to their education, their graduates 
will find themselves at an enormous disadvantage 
in the economic struggles of the future when con- 
fronted by a self-educated proletariat. 

Parliaments, dumas, reichstags, chambers of 
deputies, would not have a right to exist if the 
contention were true that discussion does not 
lead to the disclosure of new facts ; to new views 
capable of modifying the hostile relation of classes 
and even of nations; — and to the emergence of 
mighty leaders of the people. 

America's Worst Enemy Is the Selfish Citizen 

The worst enemy of America is not a foreign 
enemy, but it is the selfish American citizen 
whose democratic ideals have gone to seed, and 
whose only program is ridicule and suppression. 



42 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

The very definition of justice today needs re- 
vision. No one in America takes it badly that 
the Czar's property yielding an income it is said 
of forty-two millions a year may be confiscated. 
If we are correctly informed, there are American 
fortunes that yield the income of the Czar. This 
stupendous wealth may be admirably earned and 
expended. But there is something wrong with an 
economic system that makes such aggregation of 
property possible. At a time when between one 
and two million children are obliged to earn their 
living, unprotected by the National Child Labor 
Law; when millions of women are compelled to 
work for their bread; when over two hundred 
thousand churches throughout the country are 
straining every effort to collect and deal out their 
small philanthropies to sustain life and give shel- 
ter to those for whom the industrial conflict has 
proved too severe, America must find some cura- 
tive method of co-operation between labor and 
capital. 

Under the circumstances it is not surprising 
that America has neither zealous scientific 
paternalism, nor England's intelligent co-opera- 
tion with labor. Her past aloofness from the 
labor question is only one side of her national 
aloofness, — her intellectual provincialism, her 
suspicion or ignorance of ideas from ^* abroad," 
her dislike of European trade marks — **made in 
England," '^made in Germany." Like Walter 
Pater, America has desired to '^keep as a solitary 



LOST STATUS AND UNREST 43 

prisoner its own dream of a world.'' Her Euro- 
pean alliances may carry her into the first-line 
trenches of industrial experiment — into a social 
revolution. One road to safety is fair play for 
the worker. 



Ill 

THE WORKING-MAN AND 
PATRIOTISM 



" ' Les moralistes,' disait avec une haute clairvoyance Saint- 
Simon en 1807, ' se mettent en contradiction quand ils defendent k 
rhomme regoisme et approuvent le patriotisme, car le patriotisme 
n'est pas autre chose que I'egoisme national, et cet egoisme 
fait commettre de nation a nation les memes injustices que 
I'egoisme personnel entre les individus.' 
" Le premier point, c'est d'exister." 

Maurice Babres, 
Sous rCEil des Barbares, p. 16. 

''The instinct of life is little developed in youth." 

Mechnikov, 
Prolongation of Life, p. 254. 

" What grows upon the world is a certain matter-of-factness. 
The test of each century, more than of the century before, is the 
test of results. New countries are arising all over the world 
where there are no fixed sources of reverence; which have to 
make them; which have to create institutions which must gen- 
erate loyalty by conspicuous utility." 

Walter Bagehot, 
The English Constitutions, p. 316. 

" Our wishes lengthen as our sun declines." 

Young's Night Thoughts. 



CHAPTER III 
THE WORKING-MAN AND PATRIOTISM 

MR. ROOT, on the occasion of his formal 
welcome, August, 1917, by the City of New 
York, after his mission to Russia, gave his hearers 
and the American public a shock when he stated 
that some of the trouble in Russia had been 
stirred up by Russians who returned home from 
America, disgruntled with our institutions. 

^' These men (native Russian Socialists), aided 
by thousands who had swarmed back to Russia 
from America, thousands who returned vilifying 
and abusing the land that gave them refuge, gave 
them security, gave them liberty to think and 
speak and act; these men returned to Russia, de- 
claring America to be as tyrannous as the Czar, 
and calling for the destruction, not for the set- 
ting up, of competent government in Russia, but 
for the destruction of all governments — of Amer- 
ica, of England, of France, of Italy, and, inciden- 
tally, of Germany. They poisoned the minds of 
the working-men and of peasants and of soldiers. 
Their definite and distinct object was to destroy 
the whole industrial and national system of Rus- 
sia. And they had the power in Petrograd, for 
there at the beginning the garrison adhered to 
them.'' 

45 



46 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

As the months have passed, other Americans 
have returned from ampler observations in Rus- 
sia, for instance Colonel W. B. Thompson and 
Mr. Ernest Poole, whose reports are more re- 
assuring as to the personnel and spirit of the 
Russian Revolution. What is more, our govern- 
ment has directly addressed to the Russian people 
sympathetic and encouraging greetings. 

We have learned also to our surprise how 
closely foreign liberals keep track of international 
happenings. We better understand the hostility 
excited in the Russian Republic by our ^'Mooney 
trial," our race riots, deportations, burnings at 
the stake and lynchings. What can be less at- 
tractive to a new democracy than the mistakes of 
older democracies? 

We should not resent criticism from Petrograd 
when we have quite as harshly criticized our- 
selves. 

An official commissioner of California, in his 
report upon industrial outrages in that State, 
likened them to Russian outrages under the old 
regime, and Colonel Weinstock had visited Rus- 
sia. Our working-classes call our police ** Cos- 
sacks." 

John Graham Brooks, in his volume, ^'Ameri- 
can Syndicalism," published in 1913, writes as 
follows: ''No less fateful is it that syndicalism 
comes among us at a time when the general atmos- 
phere is electric with rude and querulous discon- 
tent; when censure of our main stabilities, con- 



WORKING-MAN AND PATRIOTISM 47 

stitutions, courts, judges, will bring applause to 
any general audience in the United States. This 
criticism of our ^secular sanctities' is not in the 
least an affair of mobs alone. It speaks openly 
and unashamed in the books and utterances of 
scholars and first-rate publicists. In nearly 300 
regular socialist periodicals, this defiant criticism 
has become the habitual reading of some millions 
of our inhabitants. I have heard a large working- 
class audience burst into uproarious guffaws at 
this sentence spoken from the platform: *No so- 
ciety could exist that did not respect its courts 
of justice.' A very able university president re- 
cently attempted the defense of our conserving 
institutions in a popular arena. He was so 
heckled and worsted that he left the meeting feel- 
ing, as he told me, that ^they thoroughly wiped 
the floor with me. ' " * 

We must remember, too, that thousands of Rus- 
sians are followers of Tolstoy, who, surrounded by 
absolutist governments and aggressive national 
ambitions, despaired of the spirit of nationality 
as large enough to embrace unselfishly the needs 
of struggling humanity. 

^^ Tolstoy thought patriotism was stupid and 
immoral. He said it was stupid because it made 
every country think itself superior to other coun- 
tries, and immoral because it made one country 
take advantage of another. No patriot in the 
accepted sense, he said, could be a Christian, "f 

*Pp 101-102. 

f f rancis B. Reeves, " Russia Then and Now." 



48 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

When Miss Wald, of the Henry Street Settle- 
ment (and there is no higher authority upon the 
mental attitude of Russian immigrants), was 
asked to comment upon Mr. Root's criticism of 
immigrants who had returned to Russia from 
America and condemned our democracy, she re- 
plied that the majority of the immigrants she 
saw she believed to be peculiarly American and 
patriotic. I should say the same thing. Perhaps 
the trouble is that the immigrant is too American 
and bores us by always quoting the Declaration 
of Independence and Abraham Lincoln. Some of 
our countrymen are a little tired of these exhibits. 

An American ambassador in Europe, a man of 
large wealth, expressed the fear, when Mr. Wilson 
was elected President, I am told, that, now de- 
mocracy was in the saddle, America would send 
over, to replace him as ambassador, ^ ' some Abra- 
ham Lincoln sort of man, who,'' he said, ** would 
never go here." 

In an audience composed mostly of working- 
people, the invited speaker, a gentleman of im- 
portance, could not recall some phrases of Lin- 
coln's Gettysburg address, which he groped for 
in the course of his speech. They were supplied 
quietly from the floor by a Russian boy who had 
been but a short time in this country. Which of 
these two, the ambassador or the Russian boy, 
should you call the more promising American? 



WORKING-MAN AND PATRIOTISM 49 

Unfortunate Linking of Patriotism with 
Patrimony 

A spirit of disillusioned criticism is well known 
to speakers in meetings of working-men. When 
supporters of President Wilson at public meet- 
ings quoted his watchword, that America was to 
make the world a safe place for democracy, the 
speaker could usually expect a laugh from the 
audience and a sneering rejoinder, ^ ^ Show us your 
democracy''; or, ^^They have more democracy 
now in Europe than America has." I have also 
heard working-men cry out, *^Why should I fight 
for a country where I do not own a shovelful of 
mud?" A labor leader, Kruse, before the Senate 
Military Committee, previous to the return of the 
Army Bill to the Senate for debate, said, *^What 
have my men got to fight for? They have no 
homes and no country. Why should they be 
forced to shed their blood for the capitalists?" 
Their landlessness and helplessness had destroyed 
their sense of patriotic relation or obligation. 
Patrimony and patriotism, in their minds, go 
together. 

Let us not be too hard upon perplexed immi- 
grants who come to us with impracticable hopes, 
in their moments of extreme disappointment. 
The average American is not aware that America 
has lagged in the marching column of democracy ; 
but Winston Churchill wrote in the New York 



50 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

Times, of December 2, 1917, after visiting Europe : 
* ' Today it is safe to say we have become the most 
conservative of the nations of the western world. 
We were once the most radical. ' ' 

Is Patbiotism More Pronounced in a Predatory 

Class? 

Besides disgruntled immigrants there were in 
the United States many working-men who were 
not keen to enter the war, but who accepted the 
action of the government and have supported it 
with their lives, their labor, their savings and with 
high spirit. 

If we follow Mr. Veblen's social analysis and 
divide classes into predatory and industrial, we 
can easily understand how the industrial, with its 
long descent or its self-chosen ideals, would be 
inert toward a military program. 

Four things in our democracy made it slow to 
turn to a military settlement : 

1. An increasing intelligence and confidence in rea- 
son. In a popular government force is naturally the 
last word. 

2. The association of war with national economic 
rivalries and capitalistic competition which are viewed 
unsympathetically by wage-earners. 

3. The lessening of national egotism and selfishness 
by the fusion of many races, which tends to destroy 
racial theories of superiority. 

4. The growing sense of the value of life which is a 
product of democracy. 



WORmNG-MAN AND PATRIOTISM 51 

Mr. George Louis Beer points out in his book, 
**The English Speaking People'^ (where he urges 
a hearty rapprochement between Great Britain 
and America), that international anarchy is the 
result of the theory of national sovereignty. But 
this power of the nation to regulate its own af- 
fairs, free from outside interference, is new and 
hardly won. For a thousand years the fight in 
Western Europe was between emerging national 
sovereignty and the old ecclesiastical control by 
the Roman Church. This fight nationality won. 
Then political democracy emerged and controlled 
the nation. The industrial democracy arose 
and led the people. Now the working popula- 
tion of Europe and America are trying to get 
together, which is the meaning of internation- 
alism. 

Under the leadership of Mr. Gompers trade- 
unionism in America has more and more formally 
placed itself by the side of the government. The 
war Socialists joined them. Later even pacifist 
Socialists took a military attitude. They per- 
ceived that the Russian working-men were be- 
trayed in their idealistic hopes, when they fancied 
that if they refused to fire upon their German 
brothers, and laid down their arms, the German 
working-men in the army and out of it would 
revolt against their masters. 

In addition to this psychological experience 
they were convinced of the Kaiser ^s imperialistic 
program when Germany continued to attack 



52 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

Russia after it had thrown down its arms and 
signed a peace compact. 

From the deeper view of democratic strength 
it is a matter for American self-congratulation 
that all its classes were not responsive to the 
military situation from one motive — that they 
were not whipped into line by the government — 
but in the true spirit of America had to be 
** shown." Nothing could be a greater guarantee 
of the intelligent principles leading our common 
life than this insistence upon an appeal to reason 
which has finally brought the whole country be- 
hind the President's policy. At any rate, if our 
working-people came to the colors in successive 
waves, depending upon home-made or foreign- 
made arguments, no one can impugn their loyalty. 

Labor in England, during the war, has not only 
come to a new power but to new esteem. The 
British Munitions Commission, which visited the 
United States in the autumn of 1917, told me that 
the labor leaders had been singularly loyal to 
their agreements to the government. The mili- 
tary critic of the highest repute in England, 
Colonel Repington, in an interview at the time 
of his resignation from the Times , declared: 
** Labor has been splendid throughout the war 
and I have every confidence in labor.'' (New 
York Times, January 22, 1918.) 

The word patriotism comes from the Latin 
word pater, father, and could be defined in old 
Roman terms as piety, or filial respect towards 



WORKING-MAN AND PATRIOTISM 53 

one^s native land or adopted country. But 
modern patriotism has undergone the same 
change that family sentiment displays. Children 
of a hundred years ago feared and obeyed their 
parents. Children of today hold their parents 
responsible. The citizen of the past felt his 
obligation to the state. He now feels the state's 
obligation to him. 

This changed attitude, this demand upon the 
parental concern of the state, is further intensi- 
fied by a changed view of the meaning and plan 
of politics. The working-people used to think that 
all power proceeded from political control. They 
now believe that real power proceeds from indus- 
trial control and that politics, little better than a 
camouflage, conceals this deeper economic control. 
Politics then being the expression rather than the 
source of power, the working-men no longer look 
to it for the benefits promised by parties but 
demand for themselves an influence that corre- 
sponds to their economic importance. 

But the patriotism of the working-men of the 
world we must admit is founded not so much upon 
their satisfaction with their countries as they find 
them, as it is with an ideal that is becoming 
clearer and clearer to the working-classes of all 
lands, which they fervently believe their country 
specially qualified to realize. Not only are they 
fighting Hohenzollern imperialism but any kind of 
dynastic, political, or even industrial imperialism, 
the world over. 



54 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

Through the smoke of war, democracy has at 
last discerned its vision of a world government 
by the honest aims of humanity everywhere. The 
workers reach out towards all upbuilding human 
opportunities which their toil, when educated and 
properly guided, can more than adequately pay 
for in the increased production of wealth, which 
the future, organized industrially and democrati- 
cally, can easily create. 

If in the past it was land that united us because 
with our enormous public domain everyone might 
hope for a home, we must again relate land to 
the people or unite them by a new property pos- 
session. Land is only a gauge of security. What 
our working-people want is security. 

The labor movement in New York as early as 
1829 made radical demands based on the neces- 
sary exclusion of mechanics from the land. A 
preamble drawn up by Thomas Skidmore, a me- 
chanic, lays it down ^ ' in the first form of govern- 
ment no man gives up to others his original right 
of soil and becomes a smith, a weaver, a builder, 
or other mechanic or laborer, without receiving a 
guaranty that reasonable toil shall enable him to 
live as comfortably as others.'' 

Making Patriots by Economic Security 

All cannot live as farmers on the land but the 
land can serve all. All cannot raise their own 
food but there can be food for all. Let us recog- 



WORKING-MAN AND PATRIOTISM 55 

nize the fact that the man out of a job, who is 
left to roam about and waste his time till he finds 
one, while his family starves, has nothing to be 
patriotic about. 

Let us make him a patriot by making him eco- 
nomically secure. 

*'Men care but little about the form of government 
under which they live as long as they are industrially 
free. Neither politics or religious persecution dislodge 
the property-owning class. So strong is the tie of prop- 
erty, of even a little property, that men suffer every 
sort of oppression rather than abandon their native 
homes. It is poverty that drives men to dare the 
unknown. ' ' * 

But poverty can kill patriotism today as easily 
as in the past; if you would develop patriotism 
abolish poverty. 

Will Crooks, the London M. C. and M. P., who 
opposed the Boer War, supports Great Britain 
in its fight against Germany. The difference to 
him was the danger in the present war of the 
Germans violating the English working-man *s 
home. 

The final compulsion in America that caused 
the well-to-do to enter the war was their per- 
suasion that Germany, if victorious, would levy 
tribute on the United States and when she got 
ready carve up our country. 

* Frederic C. Howe, " Privilege and Democracy in America," 
p. 13. 



56 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

If the American working-men do not share t^e 
fears of Will Crooks as to their women folk, nor 
the fears of the American privileged class as to 
property, why should they then be easily stirred 
to war? That they have so largely accepted 
the situation is due to their confidence in the 
policies of President Wilson; it is a confirmation 
of their idealistic attachment to the land of 
Abraham Lincoln, the emancipated black slave, 
and the Declaration of Independence. I know 
ware-earners who have joyfully put their savings 
for a vacation into Liberty Bonds. 

The working-people see that there must be 
something to give order and restraint where mil- 
lions live together. They also see that '* govern- 
ment as a rule is a plus quantity, ' ' but their eyes 
are now opened by the publicity given to diplo- 
matic interchange, to the manipulation of govern- 
ment in the interest of families and oligarchies 
to an unbelievable extent. They have new reason 
to fear *^ governing classes," secret diplomacy, 
militarism, and the pushing of successful capi- 
talism into an aristocratic realm of stupendous 
waste. The diplomatic revelations of this war 
have given arguments to anarchy ; for all the suf- 
ferers can blame ^* government." 

The exhibition of loyal attachment shown by 
our working-people has been amazing. Labor or- 
ganizations have passed votes of approval of the 
government and promised co-operation. Seven 
hundred foreign language papers have sent to 



WOEKING-MAN AND PATRIOTISM 57 

the President assertions of loyalty. No draft 
riots. No German-American riots. An orderly 
acceptance of an orderly program. An army of 
a million and a half enrolled for a war three 
thousand miles away, which has been pictured to 
America for three years as little better than a 
holocaust and which we enter for no material ad- 
vantage. What higher evidences of patriotism 
from our working-men do we want I Criticism is 
not disloyalty; complaint is not sedition. The 
most devoted families are often those that indulge 
most openly in plain talk. 



I 



r 



IV 



THE AMERICANIZING OF THE 
IMMIGRANT WORKER 



Hack and Hew were the sons of God 

In the earlier earth than now: 
One at his right hand, one at his left, 

To obey as he taught them how. 

And Hack was blind, and Hew was dumb. 

And both had the wild, wild heart; 
And God's calm will was their burning will. 

And the gist of their toil was art. 

Bliss Cabman. 

" Fresh come, to a new world indeed, yet long prepared, 
I see the genius of the modern, child of the real and ideal, 
Clearing the ground for broad humanity, the true America, 

heir of the past so grand, 
To build a grander future." 

Walt Whitman, 
" Song of the Redwood Tree." 

"The solution of our problem of immigration finally depends 
upon the extent to which we are willing to give to the worker 
a larger share of the wealth he produces. 

" Abolish poverty, transform deficit into surplus, fill depletion 
with energy, and the ascribed heredity of the poor will vanish 
with its causes. No slow elimination of characters need pre- 
cede the transformation of the servile man into the straight- 
forward, fearless comrade. His essential characters are not 
manifest in him as we see him; they are revealed by those 
descendants of earlier poverty men who have broken the bonds 
that held them in want. Their constructive imagination, their 
foresight, their emancipation from superstition and fear, will 
be his also as soon as he is lifted from his quagmire. He is 
what he is, not through lack of character, but through the sup- 
pression of it. A steady surplus will do for him what it has 
done for workers who have long experienced ease and enjoyed 
their security in nature. Nothing but the rise of the masses to 
a plane above uncertainties of income can give to society an im- 
proving, physical heredity." 

Simon N. Patten, 
The New Basis of Civilization, p. 43. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE AMERICANIZING OF THE IMMI- 
GRANT WORKER 

IMMIGRATION is called by some economists 
"*■ America's biggest problem. For us it is the 
outward facing side of the world's greatest prob- 
lem — human migration. Our intelligence about 
the flow of the foreign-born into America will be 
quickened if we picture it as part of the endless 
racial roaming that included in the Glacial period 
the coming of the negroid races into Europe; in 
historic times the diffusion from central Asia of 
the Aryan peoples ; the assaults of Hun, Vandal, 
and Goth upon the Roman Empire ; the overthrow 
of the Byzantine Empire by the Turks; the dis- 
covery and settlement of the western hemisphere ; 
**the winning of the west''; the stampede of 
American farmers to Canada's virgin soils and 
the eruption of the Southern negroes into the 
North. Our immigration problem is seen more 
clearly if we remember that Japan, China, and 
India ^* export labor"; that all Asia's eight hun- 
dred millions must be spread more equably upon 
the face of the earth. Russia's land hunger 
which has absorbed a seventh of the world's sur- 



62 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

face; Germany's ambition for a place in the sun 
for her increasing numbers; Great Britain's 
colonial system with sea-control of trade routes, 
are phases of race migration which on the sur- 
face account for the European war. 

The European war has somewhat confused the 
subject of immigration in the United States. 
Already thousands of immigrants, without apply- 
ing for our citizenship, have returned to their 
own countries to join the colors, leaving a 
smaller number of foreign-born persons in our 
population. Meanwhile, immigration has dropped 
from 1,197,892 for the year ending June 30, 1913, 
to 298,826 for 1916. 

In the midst of these unprecedented conditions, 
the United States has passed a more stringent 
immigration law which requires a literacy test. 
Just now the foreigner does not want us and we 
do not want the foreigner. 

Since the Russian revolution a second return 
wave to Europe of immigrants has taken place. 
The Russian Jews in America may exchange their 
remote Zionism for the immediate expectations of 
Russian citizenship. At any rate, many of them 
seem to prefer the East with its hopes, to the West 
with its reality, — for thousands are talking of 
returning there. Palestine, too, is beckoning 
afresh the old Zionists. 

The most impressive sight to be seen in normal 
years in America is the stream of immigrants 
coming off ship at Ellis Island. No waterfall 



AMERICANIZING OF IMMIGRANT 63 

or mountain holds such awesome mystery; no 
river or harbor, embracing the navies of the 
world, expresses such power; no city so puts 
wings to the imagination; no work of art calls 
with such epic beauty. But there are spectators 
who behold in the procession from overseas an 
invading army comparable to the Gothic hordes 
that overran Rome, and who lament this meeting 
of Europe and America as the first act in our 
National Tragedy. 

What Is Meant by the Americanization op the 
Immigrant Worker? 

To Americanize is to mould into competent in- 
stitutions the human ideals of the Declaration of 
Independence ; it is a process to which the native- 
born as well as the immigrant must submit, and 
to which the immigrant more than the native-born 
may haply contribute. 

Undoubtedly we have a situation unknown to 
any other nation, past or present. In 1910 the 
total population of the United States was 91,972,- 
266 ; of these 13,343,583 were foreign-born whites ; 
10,239,579 were negroes, Indians, and Asiatics. 
Between 1900-1910, 9,555,673 immigrants came in 
from over fifty races. Of the native whites forty- 
seven per cent, are the children of foreign-born 
parents. Of our entire population 43,972,185 
were born of native white parents — that is, only 
forty per cent. 



64 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

The League for Limiting Immigration takes a 
pessimistic view of the future of American ideals 
under the influence of race mixture and quotes 
Gobineau : ** America is likely to be not the cradle 
of a new, but the grave of an old race. ' ' * 

A volume, * * The Problem of Immigration, ' ' pub- 
lished by Professor Jenks and Professor Lauck, 
ought to modify considerably a pessimistic fore- 
cast. Both the authors were from the beginning 
connected with the United States Immigration 
Commission. They have summed up in their 484 
pages the information collected in forty-two vol- 
umes of the original material published by the 
Commission. 

The Conceit of Our American Superiority 

Broadly speaking, our apprehension of harm 
to American ideals from race mixture is nothing 
but prejudice. Much of our dread of a deteriora- 
tion of the American stock by immigration is a 
survival of ancient jealousy and alarm which once 
characterized the contact of all * ^natives'' every- 
where with all * ^foreigners." The sight of a 
foreigner meant ordinarily a raid or a war. 
This is still the case among children today. They 
revile and attack the foreigner. In America 
every new race of immigrants has had to fight 
its way to peace and safety in the community 
where it settled. Boys and hoodlums insulted it, 

* North American Review, Vol. 195, pp. 94-102. 



AMERICANIZING OF IMMIGRANT 65 

stoned it, stole from it, mimicked it, puUed Jew- 
ish beards and Chinese pig-tails, while their 
elders were exploiting it industrially. 

Another element in our fear is the fetish of 
Teutonic superiority and the dogma of Latin de- 
generacy. Races that have produced in our life- 
time a Cavour, a Mazzini, a Marconi, a Louis Pas- 
teur, a Joffre, a Bergson, that have fought and 
defeated ecclesiastic and feudal enemies in their 
own households, I venture to think have still much 
to teach us. The stability of the French in their 
political and military program is the outstanding 
fact of the European war. As for Italy, American 
officials there believe its modern progress beyond 
that of any country in Europe. 

In the Conference on Immigration held in 
New York a few years ago, there were delegates 
scarcely able to speak the English language who 
orated against later arrivals in this country than 
themselves and predicted our downfall if they 
were admitted. In short, each race considers 
itself superior; its diatribes against other races 
are sheer vanity. We Americans, in conceit of 
superiority, are in the same class as the Chinese. 
In the words of a well-known writer on Asiatic 
people, 

** after an adult lifetime of study of the peoples of the 
Far East, I find few or no novelties in their history or 
evolution as compared with that of our own rise from 
savagery to civilization; nor is their human nature by 
a hair's-breadth different from our own. What we need 



66 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

now to have cast in the world's melting-pot is the colossal 
conceit common to the white and the yellow man with 
more scientific comparative history. ' ' 



Democeacy Extends a Standing Invitation 

At any rate, our republican form of govern- 
ment is a standing invitation to the oppressed of 
other countries, and our undeveloped wealth 
makes a constant demand for strong arms and 
hard workers. What then can we do? We can- 
not shut out ^^foreigners'' and still be true either 
to our own ideals or to our practical require- 
ments. Nor can we pick and choose. There is no 
accepted standard of excellence except health, 
morals, and * literacy.'' No race monopolizes 
these. Moreover, there are not enough of one 
foreign stock, were we permitted to select one as 
the best, to do the work in the United States which 
waits to be done. 

The forms of government under which men live 
are not stereotyped, and, while some change 
slowly, others in response to the needs of the 
people change rapidly. A democracy is the most 
plastic form and gives freest course to evolu- 
tionary development. There is, consequently, a 
natural flow from rigid to plastic governments, 
which can only be checked by the plastic becoming 
set. This it cannot do without committing suicide. 

One of our mistakes (an important cause, too, 
of our distrust of race mixture) is to suppose 



AMERICANIZING OF IMMIGRANT 67 

that our own form of government is fixed and 
changeless. A republican form of government is 
created for the sake of making change possible. 
A democracy should not fear an extension of 
popular freedom; it should only fear the re- 
actionary and stand-patter, who have no proper 
place in such a fabric. 

A Pboblem not of Nature but of Nurture 

The scientific attitude toward heredity is today 
different from a generation ago. Darwin 's theory 
of slowly acquired characteristics and of the 
transmission by heredity of acquired character- 
istics was attacked by August Weismann, whose 
germ-plasm theory of heredity seriously weakened 
Darwin ^s hypothesis. Then came the botanist, 
De Vries, with his theory of spasmodic progress, 
amounting to * * spasmodic appearance of species 
at a given time under the influence of certain 
special conditions." 

Francis Galton brought forward the theory of 
mathematical inheritance, which, modified by 
Pearson, amounts to this : That of all the heritage 
which an individual possesses one-half on the av- 
erage comes from his parents, one-fourth from his 
grandparents, and so on. Meanwhile, the studies 
of Gregor Mendel, Abbot of Brtinn, neglected for 
thirty-five years after their publication in 1865, 
came to light, with a specific body of botanical 
experiments leading to certain general principles 



68 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

of heredity. The essential part of Mendel's dis- 
coveries is the principle of the segregation of 
characters in the fusion of the reproductive cells 
or gametes, and its natural corollary, the purity 
of the gametes. Mendel did not believe in blends, 
but in the unit character of heredity. 
Two theories of heredity are now current: 

**1. Children show a tendency to revert to a type 
intermediate between the types of the two parents, or 
in eases of changes of types to another type, dependent 
upon the mid-parental type. In other words, the char- 
acteristics of the parents are blended in the children. 

**2. Either the father's or the mother's type, or the 
type of a more remote ancestor, is reproduced, and cer- 
tain parental traits may be dominant over others — i. e., 
one particular trait, either father's or mother's, to ap- 
pear with greater frequency in the children than the 
corresponding but different trait of the other parent." * 

MendePs law attaches so much value to ** domi- 
nant'' and so much danger to ** recessive" units 
that under his theory it would be natural to try 
to divide races into the old categories of sheep 
and goats. But even under the operation of his 
law a mixed race has advantages over a pure 
race. 

*'The clear lesson of Mendelian studies to human so- 
ciety is this: That when two parents with the same 
defect marry — and there is none of us without some 

* " Change in Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants," by 
Franz Boas. 



AMERICANIZING OF IMMIGRANT 69 

defect — all of the progeny must have the same defect, 
and there is no remedy for the defect by education, but 
only, at the most in a few cases, by a surgical operation. 
The presence of a character in one parent will dominate 
over its absence in the other parent; . . . the advanced 
position masters the retarded or absent condition.** 



*^The mating of dissimilars favors a comhvna- 
tion in the offspring of the strongest character- 
istics of both parents and fits them the better 
for human society,^ ^* A strong argument for 
the blending of races. 

Environment today is considered a most im- 
portant factor in heredity by students outside 
the ranks of pure biologists. What a surprising 
fact — that the intellectual classes among the Mag- 
yars, the Uralo-Altaic peoples, the Slavs or 
German races, furnish us with identical measure- 
ments of trunk, extremities, etc., whereas indi- 
viduals of the same race differ considerably when 
once distinctly separated by their occupations! 
Another fact of similar significance is that the 
measurements of Austrian Jews correspond en- 
tirely with those that Gould mentioned in the case 
of cultivated persons in the United States. The 
Austrian Jews are not engaged in mercantile 
work, but almost exclusively are money-lenders, 
small shop-keepers, lawyers, and doctor s.f 

* Charles B. Davenport, " Influence of Heredity on Human So- 
ciety," in Annals of American Academy, July 1, 1909. 
t Jean Finot, in "Race Prejudice," p. 122. 



70 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

We all agree with Professor Ripley that 

"the first impression from comparison of our original 
Anglo-Saxon ancestry in America with the motley crowd 
now pouring in upon us is not cheering. It seems a 
hopeless task to cope with them, to assimilate them with 
our present native-bom population.'' 

But listen further: 

**Yet there are distinctly encouraging features about 
it all. These people, in the main, have excellent physical 
qualities, in spite of unfavorable environment and po- 
litical oppression for generations. No finer physical 
type than the peasantry of Austro-Hungary are to be 
found in Europe. The Italians, with an out-of-door life 
and proper food, are not weaklings. Nor is even the 
stunted and sedentary Jew — the third greatest in our 
present immigrant hordes — an unfavorable vital speci- 
men. Their careful religious regulations have produced 
in them a longevity even under most unfavorable con- 
ditions. Even to-day, under normal conditions, a rough 
process of selection is at work to bring the better types 
to our shores. We receive, in the main, the besib, the 
most progressive and alert of the peasantry that the 
lower classes which these lands recently tapped are able 
to offer. This is a feature of no mean importance. Bar- 
ring artificial selection by steamship companies and 
police, we need not complain in the main of the physique 
of new arrivals." 

''The great problem for us in dealing with these immi- 
grants is not that of their nature, hut that of their 
nurture.*' * 

* William Z. Ripley, in " Race Progress and Immigration," in 
Annals of American Academy, July, 1909, pp. 130-138. 



AMERICANIZING OF IMMIGRANT 71 

"We Americans who have so often seen the children 
of underfed, stunted, scrub immigrants match the native 
American in brain and brawn ought to realize how much 
the superior effectiveness of the latter is due to social 
conditions. ' * * 

The races coming to America show power of 
adaptation. But as this power of adaptation 
must be slow, we must be patient. It was slow 
among the best of the early colonists. 

*^Not merely do the children of immigrants in many 
instances show greater height and weight than the same 
races in their mother country , hut in some instances even 
the head form, which has always been considered one 
of the most static and permanent characteristics of 
races, undergoes very great changes." f 

**But the important fact to be kept in mind is that 
whatever the cause may be, and whether the change in 
type is for the better or worse, the influence of the new 
environment is very marked indeed, and we may there- 
fore expect that the degree and ease of assimilation has 
probably been somewhat greater than has been hereto- 
fore assumed." % 

The rapidity of the race assimilation in the 
United States is proved by the absence of racial 
domination where given races are numerically 
in the ascendancy. Professor Boaz finds surpris- 
ing change in one generation. 

* E. A. Ross, " Causes of Race Superiority," in Annals of 
American Academy, July, 1910. 

t " The Immigration Problem," by Jenks and Lauck, 1912, 
p. 266. t Ibid, p. 269. 



72 FAIE PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

In America different nationalities are subjected 
to the same conditions. Each has a chance to 
make its characteristic dominant. 

Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, of the National Museum of 
Washington, studied the descendants of the old 
American stock and concludes that there is a 
strong persistence of racial characteristics, but he 
finds variableness and diversity to the varieties of 
their ancestors. 

He seems, however, to meet Professor Boas's 
theory of rapid variability in finding the head 
more variable than other parts of the body — for 
example, the face, hand, and foot. 

Such a study, however, does not readily meet 
the situation, as the older families have kept a 
good deal to themselves and would not be expected 
to exhibit the amount of blend that is likely to be 
seen when the successful members of later racial 
groups come in large numbers into the Colonial 
strains. Even then MendePs law would expect 
to find ** unity'' inheritance rather than blend. 
The melting-pot would be the effect of institu- 
tions — of physical conditions, environment, and 
food ; of education, of freedom of movement from 
one class to another, socially and industrially, 
rather than the result of a physiological mixture 
of the Latin, the Teuton, the Saxon, the Celt, Slav, 
Hebrew, etc. 

Professor Earl Finch presents *'some facts 
tending to prove that race blending, especially in 
the rare instances when it occurs under favorable 



AMERICANIZING OF IMMIGRANT 73 

circumstances, produces a type superior in fer- 
tility, vitality, and cultural worth to one or both 
of the parent stocks." 

After the war there are possibilities of other 
and new fields for the sturdy pioneers than those 
that have attracted them in the past. Asia Minor 
may be open to immigration by the defeat of Ger- 
many and Turkey. If Great Britain were de- 
feated, an outpouring of her citizens as a result 
of her restricted industrial organization might be 
expected. 

If people are free to emigrate and capital is 
also free, the goal of both will be those countries 
where there is most profitable employment — ^where 
high pay and high dividends will be expected. 
Migration is the human drift toward opportunity, 
and that land will receive the largest populations 
from outside which has the most to offer. 

In this competition South America may outbid 
North America on account of larger amounts of 
unsettled land. Canada may surpass the United 
States in this race for the same reason. Russia, 
Palestine, Asia Minor may excite a new cry: 
Eastward, ho! If more of Africa should come 
under British rule, it also would be an important 
center of new populations. 

Professor T. N. Carver, of Harvard Univer- 
sity, who has recently discussed this question, 
sees at any rate for America after the war an 
immigration of an inferior quality to what it was 



74 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

before the outbreak, and, as a result, a more acute 
stage of our already serious labor problem. But 
suppose we receive some of the men trained in the 
European war armies — these ought to show new 
physical and social force. 

If rumors from the trenches are to be consid- 
ered in this question, many of the men in the 
European armies, who have been gathered in 
from clerkships and other indoor occupations, 
ardently declare that after the war they will not 
go back to their desks, but will emigrate to new 
conditions favorable for health and independence. 

There is talk of laws in Europe to restrain 
emigration in behalf of the upbuilding of ruined 
industries. On the other hand, when the thirty- 
seven millions of soldiers now under arms return 
to civil life, where will they find employment? 
Hard times may be expected which would compel 
emigration. America, as the country least hurt 
by the war, might be expected to be less depressed 
industrially and consequently to give employment 
to the largest number of working-people unless in 
Europe State Socialism or labor control provides 
work for all. 

The democratic tendencies in these other gov- 
ernments may react upon our own in such a fash- 
ion as to make us more sympathetic with immi- 
grants who, before they start from home, are 
already imbued by their own government with 
democratic ideas. On the other hand, it is a ques- 
tion whether with the democratizing of European 



AMERICANIZING OF IMMIGRANT 75 

governments, emigration from those countries 
will not naturally be checked. 

Frederic C. Howe, Commissioner of Immigra- 
tion, believes that immigration in America after 
the war will center around the idea of ownership 
of land. In America in the recent past immigrants 
have settled in the cities because they cannot do 
what the earlier immigrants did, namely, acquire 
cheap land in the West. Two hundred million 
acres of American land are now held by 250,000 
corporations. America to bid for immigration 
must offer homesteads as Canada has done, as 
England, Russia, Germany, and other states are 
in process of doing. Just as wide ownership of 
small farms in France has been one of the ele- 
ments of making the French a non-emigrative peo- 
ple, the breaking up of the great estates owned 
by the royal families or nobility of European 
countries will encourage those classes in Europe 
to stay home which have in the past migrated. 

**In my opinion," declares Mr. Howe, *^ immi- 
gration to the United States will be profoundly in- 
fluenced by the big land colonization projects of 
the European nations. It may be that large num- 
bers of men with their savings will be lured away 
from the United States." Mr. Howe further in- 
forms us that a measure is before Congress look- 
ing for some similar farm colonization scheme for 
this country and that the State of California is 
undertaking a comprehensive investigation of this 
subject. 



I 



PHYSICAL BETTERMENT— THE 
FUNCTION OF THE STATE 



"To me health is more important than all imaginable phi- 
losophy; and were it not that Philosophy teaches the recovery 
of health as her first maxim, she would not avail three straws." 

Thomas Cablyle, 
Letter to Jane Welsh, July 9, 1826, p. 303, Vol. II. 

" The greatest task of military preparedness is to put the men in 
good physical condition." 

Dr. Tait Mackenzie, 

Director-General of Physical Training 

in the Armies of Great Britain. 

" It may be seriously asserted that a chief cause for the remark- 
able achievements of Greek education was that it was never mis- 
led by false notions into an attempted separation of mind and 
body." 

John Dewey, 
Democracy and Education, p. 166. 



CHAPTER V 

PHYSICAL BETTERMENT— THE FUNC- 
TION OF THE STATE 

THE State of New York by recent legislation 
has led the way in compulsory physical train- 
ing. It has taken this step in the face of war, 
indeed as a part of military preparedness. Eu- 
ropean precedents for compulsory physical train- 
ing, as for instance in Austria and France, had 
a similar military origin, except that in those 
countries it followed defeat. 

At any rate, America's immediate concern 
over military efficiency will doubtlessly lead other 
States of the Union to take care of the physique 
of its youths. 

In the United States we need governmental 
supervision of physical training. The call for 
the scientific oversight of national physique is 
pressing. The task is too large for private or 
even local agencies. Our conditions are unique. 
We must improve physique under unfavorable 
conditions — ^millions of foreigners in new lands; 
millions of farm-born folk in cities. No small 
part of our problem — the improvement of the 
American physique — is the acclimatizing of immi- 

79 



80 FAIE PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

grants and the urbanizing of foreign peasants and 
of native farmers. 



Physical Deteeioration Pronounced Among 
Our City Poor 

Nothing has surprised me more, in thirty years 
of parish work in a manufacturing town and in 
a metropolis, than to discover the wretched phy- 
sique of the poor. In most European countries, 
height and weight are slightly decreasing. In 
England, Tommy Atkins is getting smaller and 
smaller; before the war, recruits even five feet 
two inches tall, with a chest measure of thirty- 
three and one-half inches, were hard to find. 
Now as to size there are no restrictions. 

At the outbreak of the Spanish War, at least 
twenty-five per cent, of our militiamen, as I was 
informed by the Adjutant-General, could not 
meet the physical requirements of the United 
States army. Similar failure of militiamen to 
meet the physical examination of army surgeons 
was disclosed in the mobilization of troops along 
the Mexican border. In the first draft about 
thirty-three per cent, were rejected for physical 
unfitness. 

The physical standards for the United States 
army and navy are high, nevertheless the de- 
ficiencies of militiamen might have been foretold 
from the physique of school children. For in- 
stance, in the city of New York physical exam- 



PHYSICAL BETTERMENT 81 

ination and supervision are given to school 
children by the Department of Health. This 
expert inspection and treatment have done much 
good and cannot be too highly praised. But 
at least two-thirds of the children examined 
have been found to need a physician's or sur- 
geon's care, while of the backward and truant 
children more than nine-tenths are defective. 

The New York Globe of August 4, 1917, had the 
following editorial: 

*'An examining physician for one of the local exemp- 
tion boards was moved to remark the other day after 
looking over some draft registrants: 

" 'These men are round shouldered, flat chested, flat 
footed, slab sided, and suffer from hernia, defective 
hearts, and a dozen other chronic maladies. This is the 
sort of men we are breeding on the east side. The coun- 
try need not be surprised or aggrieved. If the nation 
wishes healthy, upstanding citizens to fight its battles, 
let it produce such citizens. But if it denies children 
food, air, and all else that children should have, it may 
expect just such a harvest as this.' 

''There are thousands and thousands of children in 
the city to-day who are growing up to be round shoul- 
dered, flat chested, flat footed, slab sided men, with 
weak hearts and a dozen other chronic maladies. It is 
not their fault. Opportunity to develop into strong, 
healthy men is denied them." 

^'The New York Board of Health estimates that 
one hundred thousand children in the public 
schools go insufficiently nourished." (Quoted by 



82 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

William G. Wilcox, President of the old Board of 
Education, and submitted by him in his report to 
the new Board of Education, at the end of 1917.) 

In 1910 Professor Irving Fisher estimated that 
there were twelve millions of children in our 
schools in immediate need of medical and sur- 
gical attention, that is to say, three-fifths of our 
school population.* 

He further tells us that there are three millions 
of sick people in the United States all the time, 
so that ** There is no other measure now before 
the public which equals the power of health insur- 
ance for social regeneration. * ' f 

In Rochester, New York, investigated by the 
Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. of New York 
City, it was shown that **only 50 per cent, of the 
total sick outside the institutions were in the care 
of physicians and only 45.3 per cent, of those sick 
were able to work and were being cared for. ' ' 

A study in Dutchess County made by the State 
Charities Aid Society found ^ * that even among the 
well-to-do 10 per cent, did not receive adequate 
care; among the middle classes those that could 
pay for service for a certain time 50 per cent, were 
not adequately cared for, and among the poor 68 
per cent, received inadequate care. ' ' t 

* Report on National Vitality. 

t Tenth annual meeting of the American Association of Labor 
Legislation, December, 1916. 

$Dr. Alexander Lambert, Chairman Social Insurance Com- 
mittee, Medical Association, Tenth Annual Meeting of the Ameri- 
can Association of Labor Legislation, December, 1916. 



PHYSICAL BETTERMENT 83 

** Today the burden of sickness and its results 
is tremendous. Could it be visualized it would be 
appalling. ' ' * 

The Causes op Impaired Physique Among Our 
City Poor 

The causes of physical deterioration among the 
poor of the cities are not far to seek. One is 
overcrowding, another is underfeeding. 

In 1790 only 3.14 per cent, of the population of 
the United States lived in cities of over ten thou- 
sand population ; in 1910 the percentage of urban 
population was 46.3. In New York State only 3 
per cent, are agriculturists. 

**A cow does not need so much land as my eyes 
require between me and my neighbor. ' * Seventy- 
five years ago Emerson quoted this approvingly. 
What a contrast to *4ung block" and other con- 
gested city quarters today, with their 700 to 1000 
souls per acre. 

A farm laborer in the United States in 1900 
could produce five times as much as in 1850. 
^*The introduction of machinery has increased 
the productive power of each laborer in agricul- 
ture, so that fewer persons produce more prod- 
uct; and the consequence has been that a large 
portion of the population has changed from 
agriculture to various kinds of manufacture and 
transportation. ' ' f 

* W. C. Archer, Deputy Commissioner, in charge Workmen's 
Compensation, New York State Industrial Commission, December, 
1916. t United States Census, 1900. 



84 FAIE PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

The city has come to stay. We cannot correct 
city congestion by spreading its population in 
the unsettled lands of the South and West, upon 
our nearer and abandoned farms, or in our 
suburbs. The city is an economic and spiritual 
necessity. Men must be in closest association 
to produce wealth with the least possible waste, 
and also for that personal contact which, pa- 
tiently and kindly met, develops, as nothing else 
can, mind, heart, and will. They must labor to- 
gether for economic advantage and live together 
for spiritual elaboration. 

The increased density of population increases 
the death-rate. Dr. Newsholme declares : * 

*^The higher death-rates which are usually associated 
with increased density of population are not the direct 
results of the latter. The crowding of people together 
doubtless leads to the rest, to fouling the air and water 
and soil, and to the increased propagation of infectious 
diseases, and thus affects the mortality. But more im- 
portant than these are the indirect consequences of 
dense aggregation of population, such as increase of 
poverty, filth, crime, drunkenness, and other vices, and, 
perhaps more than all, the less healthy character of 
urban industries. Of the direct influences connected 
with the aggregation of population, filthy conditions 
of air and water and soil are the most important. Pov- 
erty of the inhabitants of densely populated districts, 
implying, as it does, inadequate food and deficient 
clothes and shelter, has a great effect on swelling their 
mortality. ' ' 

♦"Vital Statistics," pp. 157, 159. 



i 



PHYSICAL BETTERMENT 85 

Where there is a high death-rate there will be 
deterioration of physique. Many are attacked 
by disease who do not succumb, but whose vitality 
is diminished and who not only carry through life 
physical weaknesses or blemishes produced by 
the disease, but impart impaired vitality to their 
offspring. 

Class and Race Acclimatization Aee Potent 
Factors in City Physical Deterioration 

With the growth of industrialism, cities must 
expand. In the country farms are deserted; in 
the city mushroom apartment-houses spring up. 
A majority of the men and women of the United 
States will soon live in tenement-houses. 

Our cities are not only filled from our aban- 
doned farms with people who for generations 
have been used to the vigor of country labor; 
our cities are filled with aliens. We are crowd- 
ing the tenements with foreigners. The Ameri- 
can farmer's boy, removed to devitalized city 
air, is trying to breathe and the European 
peasant in America is trying to keep his health. 
Class and race acclimatization must go on at 
once. The farmer is bent upon becoming a fac- 
tory or mercantile unit; the foreigner hastens to 
become an American. This is serious business. 
If you know any mill town full of foreigners, 
you have mourned over the deterioration of phy- 
sique in the second generation. American food, 



S6 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

hot summers, cold winters, stuffy tenements, play 
the mischief with ruddy, beefy Englishmen or 
Irishmen or whom you will. I have been repeat- 
edly shocked to find among cotton operatives girls 
of sixteen with full sets of false teeth. 

Our own ancestors had to fight the climate. 
The children of the colonists made hard work of 
survival. Cotton Mather (and he was of the in- 
telligent, comfortable class three generations 
from Plymouth Rock) had some fifteen children, 
of whom only four survived him. After three 
hundred years we ought to know how to assist 
acclimatization and how to escape its losses. 

Underfeeding Is a Factor in Physical 
Deterioration 

In England ten years ago, according to Sir 
John Gorst, thirty per cent, of the population 
lived below the margin of proper nourishment. 
In Edinburgh seventy-five per cent, of the school 
children had disorders due to underfeeding. A 
German writer before the war could throw in the 
face of England the fact that one-third of its 
population lived in the gutter. Astounding as it 
may seem, war itself has made London better fed 
and healthier. 

In the United States there are too many ill- 
nourished school children, as teachers can testify, 
who find that empty stomachs make drowsy and 
dull brains. It is a fallacy due to political 



k 



PHYSICAL BETTERMENT 87 

exigencies to suppose the American working-man 
fares sumptuously. From observation in the 
homes of working-men I believe that their food 
is meager in nutritive value, if not in amount. 
** Perverse or defective nutrition tends to retard 
growth and to delay the characteristic growth 
periods and also final size attained is thus re- 
duced.''* 

While we are shocked at what crowding and 
poverty can do to destroy physique, we are hav- 
ing looming illustrations of what air and exer- 
cise can do to improve it. Nature is struggling 
always to improve her children. The children 
of mixed racial marriages in America tend to 
the physique of the larger parent. 

''The Anthropometric Committee's study in England 
found that boys from the better classes at ten were 3.31 
inches taller and 10.64 pounds heavier than industrial- 
school boys and at fourteen were 6.65 inches taller and 
21.85 pounds heavier." f At Harvard College the aver- 
age student is 1.2 inches taller and 8.8 pounds heavier 
than the stipend scholarship men (poor boys who re- 
ceive help from the College funds). $ 

''The Fellows of the Royal Society of England and 
the English professional class, who may be said to rep- 
resent the greatest brain power of the British Empire, 
average respectively 5 feet 9 J inches, 5 feet 9^ inches in 

* " Adolescence," Stanley Hall, Vol. II, p. 32. 
t " Adolescence," Vol. I, p. 34. 

X Professor D. A. Sargent, Popular Science Monthly, September, 
1900. 



88 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

height and 160 pounds weight, while lunatics, criminals, 
and imbeciles, who may be said to represent the other end 
of the intellectual scale, if they are not classed as men- 
tally defective, average in height 5 feet 7 inches, 5 feet 
4.87 inches; and in weight from 147 to 123 pounds/'* 

Physical betterment, which is the effort of na- 
ture and the result of increasing knowledge, is 
retreating today, among the poor of great cities, 
before unusual conditions. A change from a 
lower to a higher civilization, from an agricul- 
tural and handicraft to an industrial manner of 
life, for the time being, is injurious to the indi- 
vidual. Evidently there should be improvement 
in health accompanied by increase in strength 
and longevity, due to the recent enormous enlight- 
enment from science, especially in those depart- 
ments that teach sanitation and the cure of dis- 
ease. But with the coming of a better hygiene 
has cropped out a new enemy to health, the over- 
crowding and underfeeding of the poor in great 
cities. This deterioration should be temporary 
and merely a matter of readjustment, as great 
populations pass from an agricultural to an indus- 
trial manner of life. Better housing, more play- 
grounds and parks, more leisure, better food, hap- 
pier social relations, are essential to the physique 
of city dwellers. But while these are com- 
ing something can be done by direct physical 
training. 

* Professor D. A. Sargent, Popular Science Monthly, 1907-8. 
"Physique of Scholars." 



PHYSICAL BETTERMENT 89 

A Free Summer Camp for Public-School Boys 

One remedy for deterioration of tenement 
physique is evident. Give at public expense to 
the poor the physical opportunities and some of 
the food the rich secure for themselves. A sum- 
mer camp for boys is no novelty. Camps for the 
sons of the rich are in high favor. Started about 
thirty years ago, they have offered such rough 
out-of-door living, as well as training in physical 
independence to hothouse children, that they are 
now innumerable. Why cannot the summer camp 
be grafted upon our public-school system? It 
could be approached from two directions : either 
from the philanthropic fresh-air work which 
sends thousands of children every summer into 
the country for a week or so ; or from the side of 
educational tendencies. 

The following headlines from the New York 
Tribune are evidence that the public are well in- 
formed of the value of the free holidays for 
mothers, babies, and children taken out of the 
tenements : 

MAKING FLESH AND BLOOD 

270 Fresh Air Children Gained 524% Pounds 
IN Two Weeks 

Girls Make Best Showing 

Youngsters Come of Families Averaging Seven, 
amd of All Nationalities 



90 FAIE PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

Ten years ago I pleaded in the North Americmi 
Review for free summer camps for city youth. 
By the law of 1916, the State of New York has 
begun to provide them. The State proposes, says 
Dr. John H. Finley, Commissioner of Education, 
**the most notable constructive program of health 
education yet undertaken by a State. In prepar- 
ing the plan for the camp there were three primary 
purposes in view. These were to keep the boys 
mentally or physically occupied at all times, to 
give them such exercises as would produce a 
strong, healthy body, and to give them such mili- 
tary training as would enable them to perform 
intelligently those duties which a soldier might be 
called upon to perform. 

'* There are in the State about 250,000 boys be- 
tween sixteen and nineteen years old. Under the 
Act 22,400 boys were enrolled as being subject to 
military training; the remainder were exempt 
under that provision excepting those who were 
actually engaged in *any occupation for a liveli- 
hood.' Out of these 22,400 boys about one-tenth 
applied for enlistment in the camp, and 1800 (the 
camp's capacity) were accepted." 

Dr. Finley and his friends are to be applauded 
for this first big step in compulsory physical edu- 
cation. In the same year Massachusetts enacted 
a similar law and Maryland, New Jersey, and 
Louisiana **took notice." Of course there is a 
big discrepancy between a quarter of a million 
boys between the ages of sixteen and nineteen in 



PHYSICAL BETTERMENT 91 

the State of New York, and the 1800 actually in 
the first summer camp. But a promising begin- 
ning has been made. 

Now let us enlarge the scope of these State 
camps until we make them industrial as well as 
military, and extend them to include locations by 
the sea, in the mountains, and in farming coun- 
try. Camps on the ocean or large lakes could be 
the center of instruction for American youth in 
the management of boats, swimming, etc. Camps 
in the mountains could be an inspiration for for- 
estry, woodcraft, lumbering, etc. Camps in farm- 
ing country, in study of soils, care of domestic 
animals, and production of crops. All of these 
things, fundamental to future civilization, are even 
today an essential and necessary part of military 
preparedness. 

Compulsory Physical Training 

The volunteer work in behalf of physical exer- 
cise among New York school children, both boys 
and girls, undertaken by the city of New York 
in co-operation with the directors of physical cul- 
ture, has been admirable both in the number of 
pupils reached and in the variety and excellence 
of the athletic work achieved. These results have 
been largely due to the scientific knowledge and 
devotion of Dr. C. Ward Crampton and to the 
wide knowledge of amateur athletics and to the 
extraordinary energy and executive ability of 
Gustavus T. Kirby. 



92 FAIE PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

The class system of the Y.M.C.A/s gymna- 
sium, the setting-up exercises of the United 
States army, Swedish gymnastics, as well as the 
new regulations for physical training in the State 
of New York, form models of physical exercise 
for our American schools, now for the most part 
given to futile calisthenics for a few moments a 
week, with the object more of correcting circula- 
tion between study periods and possibly of cor- 
recting bad desk postures, than of promoting 
general improvement in physique with all that 
it implies. 

Nor are the benefits slow in appearing. The 
extraordinary change after three months in the 
physique of naval apprentices in the Newport 
Training Station under the nourishing and wise 
supervision of naval officers is amazing. 

Why not hold out to these school children who 
are so anxious for all forms of physical prowess 
the possibility of even greater development open 
to all*? *'I firmly believe," H. G. Beyer says, 
'*that the now so wonderful performances of most 
of our strong men are well within the reach of 
the majority of men." * 

Compulsory Physical Training in Europe 

In France, Germany, and Austria a compulsory 
system of physical training is in force in all edu- 
cational institutions, both civil and military, and 

*H. G. Beyer, "Adolescence," Vol. I, p. 197. 



PHYSICAL BETTERMENT 93 

has had an influence upon the national physical 
development. The soldier, after his enrollment, 
continues a course of physical training with which 
as a boy and youth he has become familiar, and 
the main features of which still remain the es- 
sentials of his military education. Among the 
schools of England, no special gymnastic train- 
ing is officially required. The taking of proper 
exercise is left largely to the individual, much 
to his physical disadvantage when compared 
with the corresponding classes in the countries 
just named, and to the detriment of the military 
service of which he may ultimately become a part. 

In 1873 the French Government made physical 
training compulsory in all schools, and since that 
time immense improvement has been made in the 
development of the French. As in the other 
Continental armies, swimming is taught at all 
stations where the facilities exist. Some of the 
gymnastic exercises are accompanied by music. 

In Austria the highest importance is attached 
to the physical education of both soldiers and 
civilians, it being compulsory. 

In Italy, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and 
Switzerland, physical culture is looked upon as 
necessary as, and also as being an aid to, the 
mental and military education of the individual. 



94 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

An American Precedent for Compulsory Phys- 
ical Training 

If we resent or fear to follow foreign example, 
our impulse need not come from abroad: 

**In 1790 President Washington transmitted to the 
First Senate of the United States an elaborate scheme 
prepared by General Henry Knox, then Secretary of 
War, for the military training of all men over eighteen 
and under sixty. The youth of eighteen, nineteen, and 
twenty years were to receive their military education in 
annual camps of discipline to be formed in each State, 
and a military prerequisition was proposed as a right 
to vote. This plan failed of adoption, as did also the 
following recommendation, that was urged in the na- 
tional House of Kepresentatives in 1817 and 1819, 
*that a corps of military instructors should be formed 
to attend to the gymnastic and elementary part of 
instruction in every school in the United States. ' " * 

Noah Webster seems to have been the first 
American of note to propose the institution of 
a college course of physical training. 

The Round Hill School at Northampton, Massa- 
chusetts, under George Bancroft, in 1823, was 
^'the first in the new continent to connect gym- 
nastics with a purely literary establishment. " t } 

The Boston gymnasium, opened in the Wash- i 

ington Gardens, October 3, 1826, with Dr. Fol- I 

len as its principal instructor, seems to have been I 

•United States Education Report, 1897-98, p. 553. I 

t Ibid., p. 554. I 



I 



PHYSICAL BETTERMENT 95 

the first public gynmasium of any note in 
America. 

Gymnastic grounds were established at Yale 
in 1826, and at Williams, Amherst, and Brown in 
1827. 

Between 1830 and 1860 no general revival of 
interest in school or college athletics occurred; 
after the Civil War an interest in athletics was 
awakened by physicians rather than by soldiers. 

The Economic Advantage of Better Physioal 
Training 

When a national system of compulsory phys- 
ical education is advocated, the friends of such 
a plan will be asked to prove that it has economic 
value. This is easily shown. Physical better- 
ment is already recognized as a financial asset. 
If we may reckon the wage-earners as a third 
of our population, and suppose them to earn 
two dollars a day for three hundred days, the 
value to the country of extending their working 
careers by only one year would be twenty billion 
dollars. The actual figures are probably much 
higher. Our annual bill for sickness is another 
billion — twice what we spend for education. 

Physical culture for military service, although 
undertaken in maturity, is of so large advantage 
that it reacts beneficially upon the productive 
energies of society. In the training of recruits 
it is found that *Hhe greatest of all changes was 



96 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

the change in bodily activity, dexterity, presence 
of mind, and endurance of fatigne; a change a 
hundredfold more impressive than any other/' 

A man's economic value today depends with 
fresh illustration upon his physical powers. 
Some railway corporations will not tolerate ciga- 
rette-smoking, and some New York banks forbid 
the use of alcohol among their employees, on or 
off duty. The tests of eyesight for color-blind- 
ness have become in our generation a require- 
ment of great services. One excuse for child- 
labor is the early decrepitude of parents in the 
laboring classes. Physical betterment would pre- 
serve the vigor of the average working-man be- 
yond early middle life ; would free him from need 
of stimulants; would extend the period during 
which he could support himself and educate his 
family; would increase the ability of wage- 
earners to provide for old age; and would en- 
large the wealth-producing population. 

MoRAii Advantages of Better Physical Training 

A great deal of work that we, in our debilitated 
and nervous generation, throw upon the moral 
nature of man ought to be left to the physical 
nature. We have overburdened the moral and 
have asked altogether too many tasks of it ; we not 
only expect it to stand the stress of great crises 
and to develop higher spiritual traits, but also to 
be constantly on duty to drag the erring indi- 



PHYSICAL BETTERMENT 97 

vidua! away from casual lapses. A normal body- 
should do this. 

Physical exercise, it is well known, diminishes 
sexuality. The connection between morality and 
athletics is recognized in the leading American 
universities. 

At Elmira Reformatory the introduction of 
athletic exercise among the prisoners produced 
astonishing results, not only in the physique, but 
the behavior and moral attitude of the men.* To 
judge from photographs of incoming prisoners 
(naked), much of their moral delinquency might 
have been due to their physical plight. 

Health is the best mentor; a sick, devitalized 
man is restlessly driven to all sorts of substitutes 
for strength — to drink, to pleasure, to passion — 
in fact, to any excitement that momentarily 
stimulates his energies. Health has no need of 
narcotics and will hold a man to a proper and 
reasonable manner of life. To ask the will to 
keep a neurotic out of mischief is to postpone 
physical improvement and hasten a final catas- 
trophe. 

The problem of crime is simplified by compul- 
sory physical training. ^^Lack of exercise,'' said 
Miss Agnes M. Hayes, of Public School No. 35, 
*4s the chief cause of thieving. If the boys had 
more playground, more air and sunshine, they 
would not gamble, and it is gambling that leads 

* New York State Reformatory at Elmira. Seventeenth Year- 
Book, pages P' and following. 



98 FAIE PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

to stealing. They would rather play football than 
get down in a cramped position to play craps.'* 
Summer is the season of crime. Law-breaking, 
like a noxious plant, flourishes with the sun ; even 
among school children, unruliness increases with 
the temperature. There are twice as many bad 
boys as usual when the temperature ranges be- 
tween eighty and ninety, and three times as many 
when the thermometer soars still higher. Crime, 
immorality, and suicide hold high carnival in 
June, July, and August. If the children who 
swarm the tenement-houses could live during the 
summer in the country, under a splendid physical 
regimen, not only would much actual law-break- 
ing be prevented, but incipient tendencies toward 
crime averted. 



Mental Advantages of Improved Physique 

Today we can trace physical advantage very 
far. Professor Mosso, of Turin University, 
says : * 

**We attain in training a maximum of intensity and 
we keep ourselves, not for an instant only, at the cul- 
minant point of physical force, but even when the 
muscles have returned to their natural size after long 
rest, even for months the beneficent effect of exercise 
remains. ' * 

* " The Theory and Practice of Military Hygiene," by E. L. 
Munson, p. 400. 



PHYSICAL BETTERMENT 99 

This benefit is largely in the storage of nervous 
strength. Charles Mercier, the English alienist, 
points out that, as states of mind are but the ob- 
verse side, the shadows, of nervous processes, 
whatever has effect upon the nervous processes 
has effect on the mental states. Memory, for in- 
stance, is on the bodily side the reviviscence of 
a physical process that has previously been ac- 
tive. The physical basis of memory is only too 
apparent to most of us, who can remember bet- 
ter in the morning than in the evening, better be- 
fore eating than after, better after exercise than 
before. 

At Sing Sing prison it has been recently found 
by Dr. Bernard Glueck that the work done by the 
prisoners in the afternoon is of a better grade 
than the work done in the morning. This, of 
course, is in complete contradiction to usual in- 
dustrial experience. Dr. Glueck discovered the 
reason to be the deleterious effects of the nights 
spent by the prisoners in their cells. 

Physical exercise is used today by alienists as 
a means of mental development. A few muscular 
movements, tried over and over again, may 
constitute the first steps of a progressive 
education and the starting-point of mental 
improvement. 

Mental and physical power are normally found 
together. In our public schools *'The children 
who make the best progress in their studies are 
on the average larger in girth of chest and width 



100 FAIE PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

of head than children whose progress is less 
satisfactory/'* 

Physical Training as a Hygienic Precaution 

Physical buoyancy, the feeling of worth and 
serviceableness, goes far to transform life from 
a treadmill into a delightful opportunity. The 
brain is directly benefited by muscular exercise 
and cleared of humors and freakiness. 

Length of days, that biblical blessing, more 
likely now to be enjoyed than ever before, is di- 
rectly fostered by physical culture. 

**The habit of breathing properly is a great factor in 
longevity and a roomy thorax and strong heart are no 
mean allies in resisting invasion by disease. When the 
latter has actually gained a foothold a few additional 
cubic inches of respiratory capacity or a small reserve 
of disciplined cardiac power may suffice to turn the 
scales in pneumonia or typhoid fever. ' ' f 

America can show twice as many physicians to 
population as Great Britain, and four times as 
many as Germany. In proportion to the gen- 
eral population, we have seventy times as many 
doctors as physical directors. We permit this 
disparity on the theory, perhaps, that an ounce 
of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Preven- 

* See also Professor Dudley A. Sargent's " The Physique of 
Scholars, Athletes, and the Average Student.'* 

t"The Theory and Practice of Military Hygiene,'* E. h. 
Munson, p. 38, 



PHYSICAL BETTERMENT 101 

tion needs more numerical representation. Gov- 
ernmental supervision of health and compulsory 
physical training will be important factors in any 
program after the war for greater industrial 
efficiency as well as for individual and domestic 
happiness. 



VI 



ADMINISTRATION OF THE LAW 
AND THE WORKER 



"Argument with hungry, ignorant and excited men is obvi- 
ously a feeble undertaking, but still it is the only method in a 
free country like this. Certainly the clubs and the police will 
never put sound ideas into people's heads; on the contrary every 
blow is likely to make a convert to a * propaganda of deed.* 
Even more subtle attacks on more stable ways of meeting eco- 
nomic diflSculties had better not be suppressed." 

The Nation, March 28, 1908. 



CHAPTER VI 

ADMINISTRATION OF THE LAW AND 
THE WORKER 

TN the past we have too largely turned over in- 
-*■ dustrial disputes in the United States to 
^^ strong-arm" squads. Instead of deciding eco- 
nomic disputes, as we do political and legal 
differences, by parliamentary or by judicial ma- 
chinery, we resorted to force. Instead of refer- 
ring labor controversies to boards of conciliation 
or to courts of arbitration, we rang up the police, 
armed bands of private detectives, swore in spe- 
cial deputy sheriffs, called out the militia and 
organized *^ vigilantes," who proceeded to gag 
discussion, to arrest labor-leaders, to intimidate 
strikers, to wound and to kill. Force and free 
speech were thus arrayed. The worker — whether 
he be foreign or native born — ^became the victim. 
Forcible contacts with agents of the law, and not 
with the higher courts, were the means whereby 
he learned the law and from which too often 
arose a distrust of the *' Government." 

I am not concerned here to justify the so-called 
** disturbers of the peace," nor do I wish to de- 
nounce the so-called ** guardians of the peace." 

105 



106 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

I only point to a dangerous gap in onr methods 
of government, a region of nicest judicial require- 
ment. The police of our great cities are a body 
of men to be proud of ; physically as good as the 
London police, mentally they are superior. But 
they are being diverted from their sphere; they 
are being intrusted with discretionary powers 
that demand higher military and higher judicial 
qualities than they can be expected to possess. 

The Reign of the Steong-Abm Squad 

The roll-call of notable cases, where riot sticks 
or bullets or bayonets were used instead of brains, 
now includes New York, Lawrence, Kearny, Perth 
Amboy, Wakefield, Cabin Creek, in the East ; Spo- 
kane, Aberdeen, Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, 
Calumet, Ludlow, Everett, Bisbee, in the West. 

In Union Square, New York, in the winter after 
the panic of 1907, the Socialists having been de- 
nied the right to hold a meeting in aid of the 
unemployed, and a crowd incredulous of such a 
ruling having assembled, the situation was put 
into the hands of the police. The crowd was 
trampled by horses, beaten, pursued, and terror- 
ized, even before a bomb was thrown by an ir- 
responsible fellow who had a grudge against the 
police. 

In Lawrence, Massachusetts, a complicated 
situation which involved a bankrupt city (whose 
former mayor had been jailed for public of- 



THE LAW AND THE WORKER 107 

fenses), twenty-two thousand strikers of over 
twenty non-English-speaking races and suspi- 
cious of the employers who were believed to con- 
trol the municipal government, was turned over 
to assistant police marshal Sullivan and po- 
lice judge Mahoney, reinforced by a regiment of 
the State militia. Many arrests were made and 
brutality was displayed against citizens, two of 
whom were killed. The strike-leaders were ar- 
rested as accessories or were indicted for com- 
plicity. Three of them — Ettor, Giovannitti, and 
Caruso — after a long imprisonment, were ac- 
quitted in a trial which showed clearly the flimsy 
character of the charges against them.* 

If it had not been for the eloquence of Giovan- 
nitti and the fear of reprisals at the hands of 
enraged working-men, it is believed by working- 
people that the three prisoners would have suf- 
fered the death penalty. 

In San Diego, California, a demand by Social- 
ists for free speech led to a reign of terror pro- 
jected by police and ^* vigilantes.'' 

Colonel Weinstock, a highly experienced ob- 
server of social conditions, appointed special 
commissioner by the governor of California to 
investigate the situation, said in his report: 

*'The sacred rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit 
of happiness, guaranteed under the Constitution, were 
trampled under foot by men who, in the name of law 

* " The Trial of a New Society," J. Elbert, 1913. 



108 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

and order, proved themselves to be the bitterest ene- 
mies of law and order. ' ' * 

Another considerable danger from our use of 
force in labor troubles is due to the amateurish- 
ness of our agents. The nervousness of inexpe- 
rienced police, ** specials,'' detectives who fear 
for their own skins more than for the property 
they are defending, impels them to shoot without 
sufficient provocation. Of course, the result of 
this ill-timed and amateur marksmanship is the 
death of many innocent persons in no way con- 
nected with the strike. 

The proceedings of the police in different cities 
have been as much alike as their uniforms. They 
have not waited for actual disorder, but they have 
conjectured from a song, a speech, or a flag that 
something subversive was going to happen, where- 
upon they started in and cleaned up the place with 
riot sticks, horses, and revolvers. 

To sum up: The police have duplicated on 
American soil old Russian atrocities. They have 
broken up meetings, if the theme was uncongenial 
or unintelligible to them ; upon the plea that such 
meetings create public disturbance, they have | 
*^ beaten up" would-be organizers of labor and 
have denied Socialist speakers and I. W. W. ■ 
speakers the right of free speech; they have ar- 
rested loiterers, pickets, and leaders in time of 
strikes when no violence had been committed. 

* Report of Commissioner investigating San Diego, Cal., dis- 
turbances, H. Weinstock, 1912. 



THE LAW AND THE WORKER 109 

In detail, they have played the fire hose on pub- 
lic speakers, women, and infants. They have 
poured lead into defenseless bodies (in San 
Diego fourteen bullets were found in one pleader 
for free speech) ; they have trampled women 
with horses and clubbed children; broken up 
meetings on streets, in fields, in public halls, and 
private buildings as if they were Cossacks. They 
have arrested peaceable citizens on frivolous 
pretenses, as, for instance, street speakers and 
their audiences, loiterers and strike pickets, on 
charges of blocking traffic or of disorderly con- 
duct, and they have filled the penitentiaries with 
them. They have tried to break strikes by im- 
prisoning the leaders on serious charges. They 
have confiscated reputable newspapers carefully 
reporting their acts. 

Furthermore, conservative citizens have aided 
and abetted the police in their worst violence. 
Unofficial bands have snatched prisoners, whose 
only crime was free speech, from the waiting 
hands of public officials; forced them to run the 
gantlet, a form of punishment revived from the 
Stone Age; stripped them naked; covered them 
with tar; escorted them out of the cities and 
turned them over to the mercies of the desert. 

Police and Courts Seem to Conspire Together 

One of the deep-rooted grievances of honest 
working-people is that during strikes^ in order to 



110 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

clear the streets, police magistrates will accept 
the unsubstantiated testimony of the police 
against prisoners who have been arrested upon 
charges of vagrancy or of disorderly conduct, 
etc., and that these judges ** railroad'* trouble^ 
some pickets or labor-leaders to jail. In this 
way the police and the courts act together and 
judicial position becomes merely accessory force ; 
that is to say, it does not perform the function 
of sifting evidence and securing justice ; it is only 
another heavy hand pushing the working-man or 
labor-leader to prison. 

The number of working-men fined or impris- 
oned on these counts is so large that this abuse 
alone has spread among them a personal com- 
plaint against our courts. I was astonished, dur- 
ing a meeting of self-respecting working-people, 
at the large number of hands lifted up when 
some one asked how many of those present, 
women as well as men, had ever been in jail. 
**A man arrested is a man guilty,'' says Carl 
Hovey, ** according to a regulation and perfectly 
sincere police feeling everywhere." Unjustifi- 
able arrest is a very terrible thing to happen to 
citizens in a republic. It disfranchises them 
mentally and creates in them an antagonism to 
the state in which they seem to have no rights. 

The working-man sees, too, in this extension of 
police jurisdiction another evidence that the mas- 
ter class is adding to its arbitrary power. The 
opposition of working-men to injunction pro- 



THE LAW AND THE WORKER 111 

ceedings is largely fear of this arbitrary power. 
For the injunction not only stops intended action, 
but it throws further proceedings (contempt pro- 
ceedings, so-called) into a court without a jury. 
Easy riddance of troublesome and successful of- 
ficers of the labor army in a time of strife is so 
congenial to the employers that the judges are 
naturally accused of collusion with them. 

DiSKEGAED FOR THE LeGAL AND CiVIL RiGHTS OF 

Working-men 

Readers of conservative New York newspapers 
cannot understand the opposition of labor unions 
to a State constabulary. If they could hear a 
description of the behavior of the Pennsylvania 
State Constabulary during the street-car strike 
in Philadelphia, they would thoroughly under- 
stand the attitude of the unions. This is also the 
attitude of the United States Commission on In- 
dustrial Relations, which reports, in regard to the 
Pennsylvania State Constabulary: 

**The legal and civil rights of the workers have on 
numerous occasions been violated by the constabulary; 
and citizens not in any way connected with the dispute 
and innocent of any interference with the constabulary 
have been brutally treated, and in one case shot down 
by members of the constabulary, who have escaped 
punishment for their acts. Organized upon a strictly 
military basis, it appears to assume in taking the field 
in connection with a strike that the strikers are its ene- 



112 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

mies and the enemies of the state, and that a campaign 
should be waged against them as such.''* 

In the New York Globe of February 14, 1917, 
was this significant editorial: 

**If a State police force is established, it should be 
dedicated to the square deal — its commanders should 
be as much alive to protecting one sort of rights as to 
protecting another sort. Free riot is bad, but quite as 
bad is the practice of denying to men the use of the 
highways and the dispersal of lawful meetings. Think 
of such gross illegality as has occurred in Paterson and 
in Little Falls and the recent deportations from 
Everett, Washington. When employers get behind the 
law, the whole of the law, the labor unions are likely 
to do the same. As long as one element is allowed to 
pick and choose as to the part of the law to be enforced, 
so other elements are likely to do the same.'' 

The machine-gun firing from the moving train 
into the tents of strikers at Cabin Creek, West 
Virginia; the kidnapping and maiming of labor 
leaders at Calumet, Michigan; the bloody volley 
of the militia into women and children at Ludlow, 
Colorado; the rain of bullets shot by a posse of 
citizens at the I. W. W. passengers on a steamer 
trying to land at Everett, Washington ; the depor- 
tation of twelve hundred miners at Bisbee, Ari- 
zona, by the mine owners and the lynching of 
Little, a crippled labor leader at Butte, form a 

* United States Commission on Industrial Relations, Vol. I, 
p. 98. 



THE LAW AND THE WORKER 113 

crescendo of outrage upon the civil status of 
working-men. The theory of the employers still 
seems to be that if labor leaders can be killed 
or silenced, industrial ^' unrest'^ will end. 

Who Are the Greater Criminals'? 

Colonel Weinstock's question in his report to 
Governor Johnson is being very generally asked : 

*'Who are the greater criminals; who are the real 
violators of the Constitution; who are the real 'unde- 
sirables' — these so-called unfortunate members of the 
'scum of the earth' or these presumably respectable 
members of society" — viz., the aiders and abetters of 
police and judicial outrages? 

The Boston newspapers at the time of the 
Lawrence strike published little that explained 
the attitude of the strikers, nothing that upheld 
them. An educated man close to both sides of 
the situation sent a communication to the liberal 
Boston papers, but it was not published. 

In California and in Michigan the labor lead- 
ers accuse the press of suppressing important 
news. The New York Call, a Socialist newspaper, 
finds one of the chief reasons for its existence in 
the fact that it ^* regularly publishes news not 
found in other papers." 

Another form of suppression is the silence of 
intellectual leaders. Great intellectual equip- 
ments capable of rational solution of economic 



114 FAIE PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

problems are not heard from at industrial crises. 
Harvard College, only twenty-five miles from 
Lawrence, did not concern itself with the ** Law- 
rence strike'' except to add a rifle corps to the 
military contingent. 

The Commissioner of Labor, in his report to 
the Senate upon the Lawrence strike, presented 
July, 1912, said: 

*'The average rate of wages for 21,922 textile mill 
employees was sixteen cents per hour. Approximately 
one-fourth (23.3 per cent.) of the total number earned 
less than twelve cents an hour; and about one-fifth 
(20.4 per cent.) earned twenty cents and over per 
hour."* 

In Los Angeles the building trades early in 
1910 went out on a strike for an eight-hour day. 
When the strike had been in progress a few 
weeks, the labor men wrote a letter to the Mer- 
chants and Manufacturers Association asking 
for a peace conference. No reply was received, 
but the Los Angeles Times announced next 
morning that the communication had been con- 
signed to the waste-paper basket. A calculated 
insult began the trouble. 

One explanation of this stubbornness among 
employers is that when the older men studied po- 
litical economy the ^^ Manchester School** and 

* strike of Textile Workers in Lawrence, Mass., 1912, 
Doc. 870; 62 Congress, 2 Sess. 



THE LAW AND THE WORKER 115 

laissez faire were dominant. The go-as-you 
please economic theory, added to the Je:ffersonian 
political principle that the best government is the 
one that governs least, has shut the minds of 
many of our successful men to the newer eco- 
nomics so largely derived from social values. 

In their attempt to destroy trade-unions, em- 
ployers of labor in the United States lag behind 
the industrial experience of Europe. Trade- 
unionism has, on the whole, made for industrial 
peace and patriotic service. When strikes are 
threatened, it ought to be simpler for employers 
to explain their position to one or two leaders 
than to thousands of employees. It is certainly 
easier in time of strikes to deal with a few rep- 
resentatives of labor than with a mob of work- 
men. The contention that all labor-leaders are 
corrupt is not conclusive nor can it be substan- 
tiated. The control of munitions manufacture in 
England could not have been secured by the gov- 
ernment had it not been for the trade-unions. 

The Constitutional. Right to Free Speech 
Abrogated 

Attacks by the police upon freedom of speech 
are, of course, contrary to law. Honorable Wil- 
liam Dudley Foulke, when an advocate of an un- 
popular doctrine had been forbidden to speak in 
Chicago, wrote to the Chicago Record-Herald 
protesting. He said that any one abusing the 



116 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

right of free speech could be punished for it after 
the offense, but that to forbid a man in advance 
to speak, on the assumption that he is going to 
say something illegal, was a clear violation of 
the Constitution. 

*'At Dayton, Ohio, Socialist speakers were acquitted 
by a judge who ruled that the ordinance under which 
they had been arrested was unconstitutional, since it 
seeks to make a chief of police a sole guardian of the 
rights of the people to use public streets for all public 
purposes except the right of public travel." 

The several States of the Union parted with 
little of their police power in equipping the Fed- 
eral Government. They now exercise great po- 
lice power through cities to which they give 
charters and through the sheriffs of counties. 

*^It is a well-established principle that mu- 
nicipal police ordinances,'' says Ernst Freund, 
in his authoritative volume, *^The Police 
Power," page 57, *4ike all other municipal 
ordinances, must be reasonable in order to be 
lawful." 

The question then is. What police power is rea- 
sonable? Freund lays it down that the right of 
criticism of existing forms of government is prac- 
tically unlimited. Consequently, ordinances for- 
bidding such discussion would be unreasonable 
and so unconstitutional. 

After the Union Square bomb the New York 
Nation said (March 28, 1908) : 



THE LAW AND THE WORKER 117 

*' Force is but a feeble weapon in dealing with unrest 
and agitation, because it cannot check the spread of 
ideas. The police may disperse a mass meeting, but, 
after all, they have done little or nothing. The abhor- 
rent doctrine runs like a plague through the masses — 
passed by word of mouth, by circulars, and by the 
revolutionary press. There is only one way to combat 
it effectively and that is by reason. If we cannot 
marshal arguments to destroy the fallacies and the half- 
truths upon which the structure of socialistic and 
anarchistic theory rests, our case is, indeed, hopeless." 

Before the war freedom of speech was being 
more and more repressed, less ostensibly in the 
East than in the West, by police interference with 
public meetings; more subtly by the attitude of 
the conservative press with its increasing power, 
by laws for censorship, and by the actions of 
monopoly agencies. 

Court enay Lemon, in The Social War^ Febru- 
ary, 1917, said: 

''The methods by which free speech is curtailed and 
abolished fall naturally into five heads: (1) by acts of 
State legislatures; (2) by court usurpations; (3) by 
police outrages ; (4) by postal legislation and post office 
department rulings; (5) by the activities of that unique 
body — a private organization with public powers — the 
New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. 

''In the State of Washington to say anything 'tend- 
ing to encourage disrespect for law or for any court' 
is a crime. It would follow that the law may not be 
brought into disrespect even for the sake of promoting 



118 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

its repeal — ^the new blasphemy. In seven States we 
have legislative enactments against 'blasphemy' and 
thirty-six States have prohibited 'profanity.' In sev- 
eral States atheists, infidels, and even agnostics are ex- 
pressly prohibited from testifying, by which every ir- 
religious heretic is denied one of his most elementary 
civil rights. Vermont provides that 'a person who 
defames a court of justice, or defames the magistrate, 
judge, or justice of said court, as to an act or sentence 
therein passed, shall be fined. ' . . . " 



Substitute Brains for Bayonets 

If the exercise of the police power — that is, 
whether it is to be violent or reasonable — depends 
largely upon its administration, if the admin- 
istration of the police power depends upon social 
conditions and upon public opinion, then in the 
last resort police methods are an expression of 
the public state of mind. 

A secretary of Commerce and Labor said not 
long ago before a Congressional Committee: 

**The conflict (between capital and labor) is irrepres- 
sible. If the Government does not find and establish 
rules by which the development may be intelligently 
and normally had, then ultimately the expansion and 
the progress will be had in defiance of rules that do 
not fit. That has been the story and that will be the 
story of development everywhere." 

The American public must be shown simple, ra- 
tional methods to put in the place of our present 



THE LAW AND THE WORKER 119 

turbulent methods of dealing with industrial con- 
troversies. These successful rational methods 
exist. In Australia, in Canada, in England, in 
Germany, and in America there are govern- 
mental methods that have lessened the number 
of appeals to force. There are, too, unofficial ex- 
periments that have been encouraging. 

COMPULSOEY AeBITEATION LoGICAL. 

Compulsory arbitration seems logical and to 
stand on the same basis as our courts of justice, 
which are compulsory in their action; but com- 
pulsory arbitration is not favored by working- 
men. 

In compulsory arbitration Mr. Gompers, Presi- 
dent of the American Federation of Labor, sees 
the possibilities of a new judicial tyranny. In 
Australia, in Canada, and in England the tend- 
ency is from arbitration to conciliation. 

In Canada the Industrial Disputes Investiga- 
tion Act of 1907 applying to all public utilities 
has proved very helpful. In these industries it 
is unlawful to strike or lock out until a Govern- 
ment investigation of causes of the dispute has 
taken place. It abandons arbitration, relies ex- 
clusively on discussion, conciliation, publicity, 
and public opinion. From March 22, 1907, to Oc- 
tober 18, 1916, 212 disputes were referred for 
adjustment of which twenty-one resulted in 
strikes that were not averted or ended, that is to 



120 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

say, in ninety per cent, of the cases, the law's 
provisions were effective. 

In the United States the Erdman Act, enacted 
in June, 1898, provided for mediation proceedings 
of a purely voluntary character between rail- 
roads and employees directly engaged in the 
movement of trains. During the first eight and 
one-half years following the passage of the law, 
only one attempt was made to utilize it. Within 
the next five years, however, its provisions 
were evoked sixty times. Forty of the sixty-one 
cases were settled without recourse to strikes, 
— twenty-eight through mediation, eight by me- 
diation and arbitration and four by arbitration 
only. 

In 1913, the demand of conductors and train- 
men on forty-two Eastern railroads having met 
with a refusal on the part of the latter to enter 
into direct negotiations, the Newlands Law, which 
had been pending in Congress, was rushed 
through that body. In general it re-enacted the 
provisions of the Erdman Law relative to media- 
tion, creating in addition the offices of Commis- 
sioner of Mediation and Conciliation and a 
United States Board of Mediation and Concilia- 
tion. Under this Board, fifty-six controversies 
were adjusted between July 15, 1913, and May 15, 
1916, — forty-five by mediation and eleven by me- 
diation and arbitration. 

The Adamson ^^ Eight-Hour Law" of 1916, 
which stayed for a time the danger of a tie-up 



THE LAW AND THE WORKER 121 

on all the railroads of the country and which has 
been sustained as constitutional by the Supreme 
Court, was not called into existence by the occa- 
sion which brought it before the public. Mr. 
Adamson, as Chairman of the Committee on 
Transportation, and his committee had con- 
ferred for years with the parties to the dispute, 
and had drafted a bill which they were only wait- 
ing for a fitting opportunity to present. It was 
not an emergency bill, but the result of a score 
of years of study and conference. 

In New York at the time of ^^the shirtwaist 
strike, '^ Mr. Louis Brandeis devised a preferen- 
tial union scheme.* 

*'The preferential union shop was designed to meet 
the impasse arising from the insistence of the manu- 
facturers upon an open, and of the union upon a closed, 
shop. Under this arrangement the manufacturers 
bound themselves to maintain union conditions as to 
hours, wages, etc., and to give the preference to union 
members in employing and retaining workers. On their 
side the unions bound themselves to admit on reason- 
able terms all workers who should apply for member- 
ship, to enforce the discipline of the shop among their 
members, to restrain them from unauthorized strikes, 
and generally to see that they lived up to the terms 
of the protocol. 

^'During the year ending December 11, 1911, this 
machinery had been utilized for the settlement of 1,418 

* See U. S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 
whole number 146. 



122 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

grievances, of which 1,283 were brought before it by 
the unions and 135 by the manufacturers." 

The shirtwaist protocol was effective for five 
or six years in preventing serious dissension in 
the industry and settled through its committee 
thousands of complaints without recourse to 
strike or lockout. Owing to a change in the of- 
ficers and a new policy of the Employers' Asso- 
ciation, and consequent grievances on the part 
of working-people, there occurred a long and bit- 
ter strike and lockout in the Spring of 1916. This 
resulted in a revised agreement, believed in some 
respects to be better than the protocol as a means 
of keeping peace in the industry. 

Great Britain, ^^the nursery of peaceful meth- 
ods of adjusting labor difficulties," has made 
great strides in rationalizing labor disputes. 

* ' The most important factor, however, in the progress 
made along the lines of conciliation has been the atti- 
tude of the British labor unions themselves. Article 3, 
Rule 1, of the by-laws of the General Federation of 
Trade Unions reads: 'It is the purpose of the General 
Federation to promote industrial peace, and by all 
amicable means, such as conciliation, mediatio;i, refer- 
ences, or by the establishment of permanent boards, to 
prevent strikes or lockouts between employers and work- 
men, or disputes between trades or organizations. Where 
differences do occur to assist in their settlement by just 
and equitable methods.' The British Federation of 
Trade Unions has, as a rule, acted up to the very spirit 
of this by-law.' ' 



THE LAW AND THE WOEKER 123 

Why Coukt Disaster? 

The United States with its many legislatures, 
its regurgitation of the doctrine of States' rights 
as attempted in California and Idaho, cannot ex- 
pect to give quick relief to a critical situation. 
On the contrary, we in America have more dan- 
gerous conditions, more serious infractions of in- 
dividual liberty, and at the same time more po- 
litical rigidity. What can we expect, then, except 
disaster unless we turn our backs upon a further 
appeal to force and apply reason to our indus- 
trial problem? 

I find industrial engineers affirming that much 
of the trouble between employers and their work- 
men is due to the employers not knowing their 
job. Even when factories or workers are well 
organized by experts, the heads of the corpora- 
tion often ruin the whole organization and spoil 
results. If the employer is not infallible and the 
employee is not reliable, they must either develop 
a new co-operation from within or yield to a su- 
preme power from without. 

Under the commissionership of Arthur Woods 
in the city of New York, a new relationship be- 
tween the police and citizens was cultivated; one 
full of significance both for the better under- 
standing of the function of the police and for 
sympathetic and intelligent treatment of dis- 
turbances of public order. 



124 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

Not only were the police instructed to handle 
crowds with patience and with intelligent percep- 
tion of the rights of citizens, as to street-speaking, 
et cetera; but the police actually tried to make 
friends of the boys in the congested districts who 
have always had too many reasons to regard the 
police as their natural enemies. The Junior Po- 
lice League numbered some 4000 uniformed ladsv 
These exchanged an ideal of depredation for one 
of civic service — the hero gunman for the hero 
**cop." 

During the garment makers' strike in the 
spring of 1916 and the car strike in the autumn, 
the attitude of the police was such as to win the 
approbation of the strikers themselves. 

While the labor unions and the representatives 
of the working-men in general are firmly set 
against compulsory arbitration, yet some method 
of enforcing a judicial settlement of strikes may 
appear from a quarter different from that in 
which it has been looked for. The Adamson 
Eight-Hour Law and its discussion in committee 
point to a view clearly held by Congress that it 
may exercise nation-wide power over labor dis- 
putes. Besides boards of arbitration and con- 
ciliation, with State or Federal power. Congress 
itself, as representing all three factors of labor 
disputes — capital, labor, and the public — seems 
likely in the future to exert an influence amount- 
ing to compulsory arbitration at what might be 
called its source. 



THE LAW AND THE WORKER 125 

The attitude of attention and of co-operation 
displayed by President Wilson toward labor ques- 
tions is keeping them within the protection of 
government concern and remedy, where they be- 
long, and where alone they can safely be answered. 



I 



VII 

UNJUST LAWS AND HOW TO 
REMEDY THEM 



"I fear that the many outrages of labor organizations, or of 
some of their members, have not only excited just indignation, 
but at times have frightened courts into plain legal inconsis- 
tencies, and into the enunciation of doctrines which, if asserted 
in litigations arising under any other subject than labor legis- 
lation, would meet scant courtesy or consideration." 

Chief Justice Cullen of New York, 
Attitude of Courts in Labor Cases, 
George G. Groat, p. 32, 

" The true grounds of decision are consideration of policy and 
of social advantage, and it is vain to suppose that solutions can 
be attained merely by logic and general propositions of law 
which nobody disputes. Propositions as to public policy rarely 
are unanimously accepted and still more rarely if ever are 
capable of unanswerable proof. They require a special training 
to enable anyone ever to form an intelligent opinion about 
them." 

Judge Holmes, 
Attitude of Courts in Labor Cases, 
George G. Groat, p. 32. 

"Justice is essential to a program of self-preservation. The 
only way that America can protect itself, that the rich and the 
poor can protect themselves, is by doing justice." 

Prof. T. N. Carver, 
Essays in Social Justice, p. 32. 

" Bentham's Utilitarianism, after superseding both Natural 
Eight and the blind tradition of the lawyers, and serving as 
the basis of innumerable legal and constitutional reforms 
throughout Europe, was killed by the unanswerable refusal of 
the plain man to believe that ideas of pleasure and pain are 
the only sources of human motive." 

Graham Wallas, 
Human Nature in Politics, p. 13. 



CHAPTER VII 

UNJUST LAWS AND HOW TO REMEDY 
THEM 

A New Yoek judge who halted for a moment in 
Broadway recently to gaze up at a sky- 
scraper, was prodded by a policeman and told 
to **Move on/' He moved on. His dumb obedi- 
ence illustrated the attitude toward the law of 
the average American, who, while he may fume 
or grumble or prevaricate, nevertheless accepts 
a law pretty much as if it came from Sinai. 
There is a good deal of English law-abidingness 
inborn in the old-time American, hence his aston- 
ishment and alarm when he hears his laws chal- 
lenged as fundamentally unjust. 

But that is just what is happening today. Our 
laws are disparaged, even scoffed at, by large 
numbers of our fellow-citizens. 

For some years President Samuel Gompers, 
vice-president John Mitchell, and Mr. Frank 
Morrison of the American Federation of Labor, 
one of the largest bodies of working-men in the 
country, were under serious charges of con- 
tempt of court. The redoubtable Mr. Gompers 
is reported to have offered as his solution of the 

129 



130 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

matter the impeachment of Judge Wright. 
Shortly before we entered the war Mr. Gompers 
publicly declared that if laws were passed which 
forbade working-men to strike, they would not 
obey the laws, — **You may make us law-breakers, 
possibly, but you are not going to make us 
slaves.'^ * 

The Socialist Party, in its Chicago platform, 
calmly recommended the dissolution of the 
United States Senate and of the Supreme Court. 

If in the large, as represented by their unions 
and programs, the people flout the law, their dis- 
respect is even more apparent when they speak 
for themselves. The working-men's label for 
our government is a ** plutocracy," **an oli- 
garchy," **a government by injunction" — one of 
tyranny, not of law. He laughs at law and quotes 
you the kidnapping of Haywood, Moyer, and 
Pettibone from Colorado into Idaho, and its subse- 
quent ^* legalization" by the Supreme Court, 
which found it could not inquire into the circum- 
stances of a kidnapping by civil officials. Or he 
echoes Mr. Gompers 's seditious regret, **What 
we should have done then was to have pursued 
the kidnappers." 

** Disregard for law is fast becoming an Ameri- 
can characteristic," is the finding of the National 
Education Association in a report on a system 
of moral instruction for the public schools. 

* Before the Public Service Commission of the State of New 
York, New York Times, February 8, 1917. 



UNJUST LAWS 131 

President Taft, in a speech at the Academy of 
Political Science, in New York, referred to the 
** lighter regard for law and its enforcement in 
America as compared with England, and a con- 
sequent less rigorous public opinion in favor of 
the punishment of crime/' 

President Hadley, of Yale, urges as a cure for 
our present low standards of public morality a 
higher reverence for law, which he thinks the 
country sadly lacks. 

A growing disrespect toward law in a people 
noted for their legalistic attitude toward their 
problems is significant. The Revolutionary War 
originated in legal controversy. The long corre- 
spondence between the United States and Ger- 
many before we entered the war illustrated our 
devotion to legal considerations. 

An ambassador from a great empire told me 
that with one of our recent presidents he could 
never get outside a legal discussion of subjects. 

Americans are legal-minded, yet they are show- 
ing disrespect for the law. Under such circum- 
stances there may be something the matter with 
the law or with its administration. 

This light regard for law is a new condition of 
things in America, especially this bitter, working- 
class feeling against the law — unless we compare 
it to the antagonism evinced by the abolitionists 
toward the slave-laws in the years before the 
Civil War. The working-people today in Amer- 
ica are not behind the laws ; they do not regard 



132 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

them as their laws, but as the laws of ^* hostile 
interests/' It follows naturally that they dis- 
trust their law-makers and even their courts. 
That was the meaning of their demand for the 
initiative, the referendum, and the recall (even 
of judges). These new instruments, they hoped, 
would rescue their lost share of political power ; 
would resurrect democratic government and re- 
instate justice. 

The dissatisfaction of our working-classes with 
the blind goddess must not be confused with the 
mob spirit that often sweeps away * * our best citi- 
zens" when a negro is concerned, nor with the 
legal play of **the criminal rich.'' It is not the 
anarchist's revolt against all law, or the well- 
understood unpopularity of the law with crimi- 
nals which the early American poet Trumbull 
wittily hit off : 

**No man can feel the halter draw 
With good opinion of the law." 

There are thousands of critics of our laws and 
courts who are neither masked and cowardly 
fiends, nor rich law-breakers, nor anathematizers 
of law, nor criminals; but progressive citizens 
possessed with a humane passion for a pro- 
founder justice. Even the dean of one of our 
leading law schools before a body of lawyers, 
including ex-President Taft, is reported to have 
said that **the free democratic government that 



UNJUST LAWS 133 

prevailed here was neither free, nor democratic, 
nor a government.'' 

Laws and Courts Against Workers 

Working-men are convinced that both laws and 
courts are against them. They are astonishingly 
well informed, too, as any one who hears them 
talk can testify, about legislation and about judi- 
cial decisions that affect their class. They are 
not, in the commonly accepted phrase, ^^ deceived 
by agitators and demagogues," nor are they 
stirred by *^ vague unrest.'' Their complaints 
are clear and specific. The laws and the courts 
are against them, but are for their employers. 

To begin with, the working-people see that 
proposed legislation in their favor or for their 
protection is fought by wealth. A recent New 
York fire commissioner's order for more fire 
escapes upon factories was fought in the courts 
by the manufacturers. The law requiring owners 
of tenement-houses to put running water upon 
every floor of the tenement-houses was bit- 
terly opposed as unconstitutional even by a 
great religious corporation. The present Tene- 
ment-house Law was fought in rather a disorgan- 
ized way by the vested interests, which have since 
organized most effectively. The efforts of or- 
ganized labor to secure an eight-hour day on all 
public works was also bitterly opposed. The 
fight waged at Albany in the legislature, against 



134 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

the bill limiting the working-hours for women 
and children to fifty-four hours per week, and 
also against the law bringing mercantile estab- 
lishments more fully under the control of the De- 
partment of Labor, are other instances. 

Then, again, laws beneficial to working-people 
are passed, but are not enforced. Referring to 
the enforcement of the New York building-laws, 
the Wainwright Committee on Employers and 
Liability says: 

* * It was repeatedly brought out in the testimony pre- 
sented to us that those sections of the labor-law deal- 
ing with scaffolds, the covering of floors, the fencing 
of shafts and openings, and the protection of workmen 
are flagrantly violated, particularly in New York 
City.'^ 

The laws, it is further claimed, are interpreted 
by the courts in a fashion hostile to labor. The 
following is a partial list of important decisions 
by high courts. 

^'Refusing to haul cars a conspiracy. T. A. & N. M. 
Ry. vs. Pa. Co., 54 Fed. Rep. 730, April 3, 1893. Taft, 
Circuit Judge." 

** Quitting work is criminal. Same, April 3, 1893. 
Taft, Circuit Court." 

*' Arbitration unconstitutional. Supreme Court of 
U. S., in Adair vs, U. S., decided January 27, 1908, 208 
U. S. 161." 

*'A strike is unlawful. U. S. vs, Cassidy et al., 67 
Fed. Rep. 698, 185." 



UNJUST LAWS 135 

*'A workman considered 'under control/ T. A. & 
N. M. Ry. vs. Pennsylvania Co. et al., 54 Fed. Rep. 
746, March 25, 1893. Ricks, Circuit Judge." 

** Effort to unionize shop unlawful. Lowe et al. vs, 
Lawler et al., 208 U. S. 274, February 3, 1908." 

''Unlawful to threaten a strike. John O'Brien vs. 
People ex. rel. Kellogg Switchboard & Supply Co., 216 
lU. 354, June 25, 1905." 

"Unlawful to ask reasons for discharge. Wallace vs. 
Georgia, Carolina & Northern Ry. Co., 94 Ga. 732, June 
18,1894." 

"Legal to jail a man a month without trial. Oregon 
Supreme Court. Longshore Printing and Publishing 
Co., Appt., vs. George H. Howell et al., 26 Ore. 527." 

"Constitutional to discharge a man for belonging to 
a union. Wm. Adair vs. United States, 208 U. S. 161, 
January 27, 1908." 

"No remedy for labor except personal suit. Massa- 
chusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Dianah Worthing- 
ton et al., Appts., vs. James Waring et al., 157 
Mass. 42L" 

The Right to Strike Curtailed by the Courts 

"Every argument that strengthens the conviction that 
a temporary prohibition of any sort of strike is per- 
mitted by the Constitution is a stronger reason for the 
opposition of labor. The reasons lie, furthermore, deep- 
rooted in the history of industrial struggles. Workmen 
have not been free very long to make demands for im- 
proved conditions or to enforce such demands. One hun- 
dred years ago a concerted movement for higher wages 
constituted an illegal conspiracy and was punishable as 
such. In America the application of the common law of 



136 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

conspiracy to the activities of labor unions was slowly 
weakened by the decisions of courts. In England the 
modification was accomplished by statute. In this re- 
spect the English workers are better off, for, depend- 
ent as the American workers are upon the decisions 
of the courts, they are controlled by liberal and reac- 
tionary decisions alike. Strange as it may seem there 
is developing a tendency here and there on the part of 
the courts toward a more illiberal attitude with respect 
to the activity of unions. A man was freer to strike 
in Massachusetts fifty years ago than he is today, and 
the only difference is in the attitude of the courts. In 
West Virginia a few years ago a court held a miners' 
union to be an illegal conspiracy. In Arkansas within 
a year a court has held that a union in striking was 
illegally interfering with interstate commerce. ' ' * 

Another complaint continually heard among 
working-men is that laws passed by the people's 
representatives are nullified by supreme courts, 
and that the courts thereby assume legislative 
powers. L. B. Boudin, in the Political Science 
Quarterly, "t puts the matter clearly: 

**Each case is supposed to stand 'on its own merits,' 
which, translated into ordinary English, simply means 
that each law is declared 'constitutional' or 'unconsti- 
tutional' according to the opinion the judges entertain 
as to its wisdom. Since there are no longer any set 
rules by which the judges can be guided, since they are 
left to determine the propriety and wisdom of laws ac- 
cording to the canons of politics and statesmanship, 

* The Survey, January 27, 1917, p. 479. 
t Volume 26, pp. 238-70. 



UNJUST LAWS 137 

they naturally exhibit those differences of opinion 
which we expect to find in legislative bodies.'' 

Another fact that weakens the popular confi- 
dence in the judiciary is that our highest courts 
rarely pronounce a unanimous decision. The 
^* dissenting opinion" has educated the American 
citizen. He does not forget that he is nominally 
governed by majorities, but he has come to be- 
lieve that on the bench the opinion of the major- 
ity need not necessarily be in accordance with 
justice. Nor ought justice, he thinks, in a court 
of nine, like our Supreme Court, to depend upon 
one man. 

The people are confused, too, by the conflict of 
opinion between different courts. Let me cite a 
case prolific of amused comment: In the year 
1910 Basso, a bootblack, in the basement of one 
of the business blocks of Rochester, refused to 
serve Burks because the latter was a negro. The 
law of the State of New York requires full and 
equal accommodation in hotels and ** other places 
of public accommodation." The question, there- 
fore, was: Is a bootblack-stand a place of ^^ pub- 
lic accommodation ' ' 1 The first court said, ^ ^ no " ; 
the second, **yes"; the third, *^no"; the fourth, 
^^yes, but." 

Immunity of Wealthy Criminals 

The immunity of wealthy criminals has helped 
to disillusion the man of the dinner-pail. The as- 



138 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

sistance given by the legal profession to ambi- 
tious and desperate men in securing, through our 
legislatures, statutes favorable to their enter- 
prises, but deadly to public interest, has con- 
tributed to destroy the people's respect for the 
majesty of the law. They discover, let us say, 
through * * investigations ' ' that a great wrong has 
been done. Millions of money cannot be ac- 
counted for; vast expenditure is recorded with- 
out adequate showing in property values; what 
seems a gigantic robbery has been perpetrated at 
the expense of the public; yet, to the amazement 
of the simple-minded, the officials and owners of 
the corporations, who are well known, show no 
signs of fear and eventually go unpunished. 

A famous district attorney explained to me how 
this happens. He took some matches from a 
match-stand on the table we were sitting at, and 
arranged them as you see the lines in this dia- 
gram: 



He said: 

** Suppose each one of these matches to be a law. Sup- 
pose, then, our friend, whom everybody believes to have 
committed great frauds, is undertaking to carry out 
plans that these laws oppose. He approaches one of 
the laws and finds that it stands firmly in his way like 



UNJUST LAWS 139 

a fence. If he were to lay his hand upon that law or 
try to jump over it, he would immediately be nabbed 
and prosecuted, probably successfully. But he doesn't 
so much as lay a finger on the law. Under the guid- 
ance of his legal adviser, he merely passes along in 
front of it until he finds a way around. He thereupon 
proceeds in a similar fashion to find a gap between other 
laws, through which he just as freely progresses. 
Very likely he is again confronted by further obstacles, 
but he merely repeats the same cautious and success- 
ful tactics. He does not interfere with the law, for that 
would render him liable, but he gets around the law. 
If, finally, he runs up against a law which, as far as 
can be seen, has no hole in it, and really bars his way, 
he has only to secure or to call upon powerful political 
backing, to pass a bill favorable to his objects, which 
his legal adviser actually draws up, and so he proceeds 
— always according to law.'* 

A Class Contkol of Law 

The working-people, furthermore, through 
their most '* trusted representatives," who to our 
shame it has to be admitted are labor-leaders, 
persistently demur at the class spirit in which the 
law is administered. High executive officials, 
courts, and law officers, it is contended, are swept 
along by this class bias, consciously or uncon- 
sciously, into grossly illegal action. A case in 
point was the arrest of McNamara. 

In a letter addressed by Victor L. Berger (the 
first Socialist Member of Congress) to the Com- 
mittee on Rules of the House of Representatives, 



140 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

McNamara's arrest, leaving out of consideration 
his guilt or innocence, was declared in every par- 
ticular to be illegal. 

^'McNamara was not a fugitive from justice, and the 
Governor of Indiana did not take the trouble to make 
sure of the facts. The police judge had no proper juris- 
diction, since the law specifically provides that the ac- 
cused shall be brought 'before the Circuit, Supreme, or 
Criminal Court.' The police and private detectives 
who made the arrest had no legal right to do so, since 
the law provides that such arrests must be made by a 
sheriff or constable. The seizure of McNamara's pri- 
vate papers was illegal. The Indiana statutes (Sec. 56, 
act of 1905) define the right of Search and Seizure. 
No such act as McNamara's abduction is therein per- 
mitted. Amendment 4 of the Federal Constitution was 
also violated.'' 

The fact that McNamara was proved to be 
guilty does not justify illegal action against him 
either by the police or by the courts. 

In short, the working-man contends that long 
after the destruction of monarchical forms of 
government, class-control still goes on even in a 
democracy; that far from **the majority govern- 
ing for all,'' Mr. Taft's artless assumption, in 
reality a capitalist minority governs for itself 
alone. This skeptical position held by the peo- 
ple is fortified by the recent findings of econo- 
mists who discover that aristocracies or power 
groups have an inevitable tendency to re-estab- 



UNJUST LAWS 141 

lish themselves under new names, even in repub- 
lics, and that everywhere dominant classes make 
the laws in their own interests. 



Justice and Right Conflict in Practice 

Finally, the people perceive that justice and 
right are not identical. If you hear no other com- 
plaint voiced by the working-classes against their 
employers, you will hear the accusation of hypoc- 
risy. They do not practice in business, it is 
charged, the altruism of their religious faith, but 
look out only for number one, protecting them- 
selves behind laws, against the plain promptings 
of humanity. 

What is more, the people do not understand 
justice which is only the grist of legal machinery. 
Merely to receive the benefit of the law is not, in 
their opinion, to receive justice, which might well 
be, to their way of thinking, something better 
than the conclusive decision of the court of last 
resort. For instance, a vice-chancellor in Jer- 
sey City refused to consider the ** common sense" 
argument urged repeatedly by a litigant, and re- 
plied, **I never knew that the Court of Equity 
was supposed to supply sense to litigators. All it 
has to supply is justice.'' But, somehow or other, 
** common sense" and *^a square deal" are popu- 
lar synonyms for justice, and describe the only 
kind the masses believe in. 

The confusion of legal and moral ideals is not 



142 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

strange, nor purely the result of ignorance. Not 
only is ideal right what the unsophisticated im- 
agine to be the aim of the law, but it is actually 
what philosophers have depicted as justice in a 
true republic, and what, historically, the law of 
the Greeks, more nearly than Roman or English 
law, strove to display. 

The law of Moses, too, knew no distinction be- 
tween right and justice; there was only one law. 
Indeed, we may have the Bible largely to thank 
(or shall I say to blame?) for the persistent con- 
fusion in the popular mind of the moral and the 
legal. Simple minds in England and America 
have for centuries been fed upon the idea out of 
the English Bible that justice should be the same 
thing as right. To the common people, for in- 
stance, Solomon is not only the most splendid of 
kings and wisest of men, but the most just of 
judges ; yet how candid and convincing his judg- 
ments! Ought we to be surprised if, after gen- 
erations of picturesque Bible teaching, the people 
seem to have got it into their heads that justice 
should be identical with right? 

Law Should Accommodate Itself to the Right 

The American working-man, then, like Henry 
James's American princess Maggie Verver, is dis- 
concerted by **the discovery that it doesn't al- 
ways meet all contingencies to be right." The 
something more, over and above being right that in 



UNJUST LAWS 143 

the ease of the working-man has to be considered, 
is the law ; but owing to his straightforward way 
of looking at things, it is not to be imagined that 
right, in his opinion, should accommodate itself 
to law, but that law, as a matter of course, should 
be fitted to right. 

The relation of justice to right needs much 
clearing up, more than has been given it, more, 
of course, than I have room for here. Even 
jurists who have studied the fundamentals of the 
law are on this point obscure. One school finds 
the origin of the law to be custom, and conse- 
quently the judge, as ^*an expert upon custom," 
dispenses not only justice but also right; that is, 
as understood by his contemporaries, since he is 
their spokesman. The other school finds the 
origin of law to be the sovereign power. In 
their view, justice and right meet within the 
definition of the institutions of the day. In a 
monarchy governed by the theory of the divine 
right of kings, justice and right proceed from 
the imperial will, and are as infallible, theo- 
retically, as that which proceeds from Deity. In 
a democracy governed by the theory of social con- 
tract, justice and right are identical for the rea- 
son that the citizen, when he receives legal 
justice, gets all the right coming to him under his 
contract ; in fact, all the right his contract knows 
anything about. 

But the educated proletariat is asking for 
more than that ; it demands a closer compatibility 



144 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

between justice and right, and would be perfectly 
willing to go outside the breast of the judge, or 
the will of the sovereign, or the contract of the 
citizen to find it. The working-man, perhaps, 
naively expects law to stand for that which 
among the Athenians the Goddess Themis em- 
bodied — abstract right as well as law and order. 
Possibly we can find the relation of legal justice 
to moral right by a bit more of analysis and a his- 
torical glimpse. If law deals with what *4s,'' 
and morality with what *' ought to be,'^ then we 
can easily look back to a time when human in- 
telligence was so undeveloped that its customs 
or laws entirely satisfied it. Usage went as far 
as conscience saw, because a very simple custom 
summed up their social and psychological expe- 
rience. What was and what ought to be were of 
necessity one and the same thing, because the 
mentality of the time could not think them apart. 
With increasing intellectual scope, a later schism 
would be inevitable. 

Law Should Mobilize Society Creatively 

After all, what the working-man wants is not 
abstract right, which would be less human than 
old custom and would depend upon the vicissi- 
tudes of the metaphysical theories that estab- 
lished its standards. The working-man is seek- 
ing a positive ground for law in racial advantage 
as revealed by modern science. In short, the 



UNJUST LAWS 145 

working-man, instead of always looking back- 
ward for his legal authority, proposes to look 
forward, and is declaring that whatever looms 
as for the best interests of mankind must be 
right and should be law. The object of the 
law, as he sees it, is not merely to prevent in- 
jury, but to create all sorts of new and higher 
values. 

And why cannot the present without arrogance 
claim to be self-sufficient in knowledge and con- 
duct? The tendency to explain every advance in 
moral position by reference to the past has been 
commented upon by Sir Henry Maine as ^^a curi- 
osity of human nature." Mankind has seemed 
ashamed to see in its own times reasons for, as 
well as evidence of, advance. But we have now 
entered upon a new era whose characteristic is 
that it will honor the present. Its methods will 
be to illuminate an old science by the new sci- 
ences; it will let light into law by opening win- 
dows from law into economics, hygiene, psychol- 
ogy, etc., etc. *^The Rule of Reason," as now 
applied in jurisprudence, must eventually appeal 
to arguments discovered in the broadest prospec- 
tive advantages to mankind. Charles Ferguson 
says: 

''That day is at hand in which it would be possible 
for a lawyer to stand up in court and say, 'I admit 
that I am not in line with the precedents; but I ask 
judgment on technical grounds. The law exists to mo- 
bilize the creative forces of society; and I am able to 



146 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

show that the case of my client is in line with the sound 
rules of city building. ' ' ' * 

Put the People Behind the Law 

Nothing can be more threatening to a democ- 
racy than for the rank and file of the people to 
lack respect for their lawmakers and to harbor 
suspicion of their courts. From animadversions 
against the law, the step is an easy one to viola- 
tion of the law; from lack of confidence in legal 
methods, the way is not a long one to their over- 
throw. The activities of our courts, on the other 
hand, are not so far removed from popular feel- 
ing that dissatisfaction among the masses with 
the attitude of the bench can be allowed to con- 
tinue with no fear of consequences. Supreme 
Court decisions have, in the past, been momen- 
tous, as many men now living can testify. The 
Dred Scott decision helped to bring on the Civil 
War. We must remember, too, that we cannot 
expect the people to reverence law in the abstract ; 
an abstraction cannot long retain the allegiance of 
a democracy. They will respect only beneficent 
laws and good law-makers. 

How can the people be put behind the law? 
What remedy can we apply to the increasing hos- 
tility between classes in our republic? Let us 
look first at simple and partial remedies. 

*«The University Militant," p. 31. 



UNJUST LAWS 147 

Tell the People About the Law 

The people could be put behind the law to some 
extent by making them better acquainted with the 
law. This would be a method for which we have 
precedent in American history. The colonists 
knew their Blackstone. **The Men of 76'' waged 
the Revolutionary War more upon legal techni- 
calities than because of actual physical griev- 
ances. The orators of the Revolution could boast 
that every patriot was an embryo lawyer. After 
the outcome of the war, it was again the wide- 
spread knowledge of English law that made pos- 
sible our Constitution. 

Voices are continually heard today in people's 
assemblies and forums, often in broken English, 
expressing respectfully a pathetic desire to know 
more about the legal machinery of this country. 
They ask how laws are made ; how State and na- 
tional institutions can be changed. Lacking this 
knowledge, is it unnatural that ignorant or sus- 
picious or aggrieved working-men, especially 
those from overseas absolutism, still fancy them- 
selves in the hands of tyrannical forces? 

Why could not evening classes in the law be 
opened for working-people, where they might be- 
come widely acquainted with the subject-matter 
of law, and, at any rate, with their legal rights? 
Besides night schools for adults, law could also 
be taught in the high schools — and, perhaps, in 
the last year of the grammar school. Such law- 



148 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

studies in the public schools would give, too, a 
dignified and intelligent approach to citizenship. 

The Twelve Tables were used by the Romans 
as a schoolbook for their children. If the 
Americans were to use the Constitution even as a 
** reader/' its nature, at least, could be explained 
to future citizens who would learn that the Con- 
stitution is not a hard and fast contract between 
the States and the Federal Government — in other 
words, a dead document — but that such an agree- 
ment embodies, of necessity, the living law of the 
land, and consequently contains within itself an 
organic principle of growth which accounts for 
the constructive interpretation which, to the eyes 
of the uninformed, looks like constitutional revi- 
sion at the hands of the judiciary. Every child 
in the United States ought to be taught that the 
Constitution is not at any rate a boundary-stone, 
but more like a guide-post, and most like a tree 
well-rooted in fertile soil. 

Popularizing the study of law would do some- 
thing to correct the people's attitude, for a knowl- 
edge of the law ought to disclose legal means out 
of alleged difficulties. Two prominent Socialists 
of my acquaintance were greatly surprised **to 
be shown ' ' by a lawyer friend of mine how many 
of the things their party demanded could be ob- 
tained under existing laws. 



UNJUST LAWS 1^ 

Tell the People About Each New Law 

There is another method by which the people 
could be rallied behind the law. Suppose bills of 
the first importance in Congress and in State 
legislatures had public hearing before great 
popular audiences, where the bills could be ex- 
plained by their promoter and questions might be 
asked and answered. Public discussion is the es- 
sence of peaceful progress in a democracy, but 
it is rarely afforded in legislative debate, which 
is too often only a demonstration of power be- 
tween contending forces, with as little honest con- 
troversy as is shown in a tug-of-war contest — 
worse still, a tug-of-war when an anchor-man's 
palm has been ** greased.'' With more public dis- 
cussion we should need less public investigation. 
Honest public education about pending measures 
would have a tendency to prevent special legisla- 
tion hostile to public interest, and would develop 
among the people sympathy for law-makers and 
approval of their work — the agreeable confidence 
that the laws enacted were their own laws. 

In the State of Washington printed copies of 
proposed laws are placed in the hands of citi- 
zens, which gives them an opportunity to study 
them before they are finally voted upon. This, at 
any rate, is a frank invitation for co-operation 
and is far different from the practice in Eastern 
States, where citizens' committees have to keep 
agents at their capitals to watch for ^'jokers" 



150 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

and corrupt legislation, which those favorable to 
such undertakings attempt to have passed while 
the public are kept in the dark. 



Eliminate the Jargon of the Law 

Again, why cannot laws be drafted in such 
clear language as to be intelligible to anybody 
who can read and understand English? A deal 
of litigation would be unnecessary and much dis- 
trust of the law avoided, if in every legislature 
there were an official sufficiently a master of the 
vernacular to frame bills whose phraseology 
would not itself be a source of misunderstanding. 
^^Half the perplexities of men,'' says the Duke of 
Argyll, **are traceable to obscurity of thought 
hiding and breeding under obscurity of lan- 
guage." Even the New York Times is irritated 
at the delays and misunderstandings due to the 
obscurity of legal language, and editorially de- 
clared, **It would be well if the slang and jargon 
of the law could be reduced to terms of our com- 
mon speech.'* 

Bboader Education foe Legislators and 
Lawyers 

We must ask our legislators — so many of whom 
are lawyers — and our judges as well, to know 
something more than the law. Laws are framed 
and tribunals determine justice, not only accord- 



UNJUST LAWS 151 

ing to legal, but also according to political, so- 
cial, and economic principles. The judge who be- 
lieves, with our new political economists, that 
poverty can be abolished will hand down differ- 
ent legal opinions from his associate who still 
holds that poverty is God's judgment on inca- 
pacity. 

At a meeting of the Association for Labor 
Legislation, Professor Ernst Freund declared 
that in his opinion a systematic study of indus- 
trial hygiene would revolutionize the attitude of 
the courts toward labor legislation. 

But hygiene is not the only study besides law 
which a lawyer ought to know. Biology, history, 
and sociology would teach him that all material 
things and all human institutions are plastic to 
evolutionary forces ; that law is no exception, and 
must still further change. 

If the people believe that the laws and the 
courts are against them, and if they demand a 
change, then one of the first things to be done is 
for the conservative classes to get used to the 
idea that change is not necessarily catastrophic. 

Thirty years ago I was walking across the 
quadrangle of a theological seminary with the 
foremost educator in America. As we passed the 
library I made some remark about the oblivion 
that quickly envelops most religious literature. 
**Yes,'' said my companion, **the minister's li- 
brary soon loses its value, but so does the doc- 
tor's. Only law stands unchanged." Today an 



152 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

authoritative writer upon the law freely admits 
to me that the fundamental laws of property are 
changing. Yes, even the laws of contract — that 
stronghold of conservatism — are undermined. 

The theological library and the law library may 
not be approaching a common obsolescence, but 
those concerned with law must acknowledge that 
unexpected changes in their science are under 
way. But change does not spell disaster. Changes 
take place in our institutions long before they are 
named. A name does not make a change danger- 
ous. Lowell was a good constitutional lawyer 
when he wrote: 

''We shape our courses by new risen stars, 
And still lip-loyal to what once was truth 
Smuggle new meanings under ancient names, 
Unconscious perverts of the Jesuit, Time. 
Change is the mash that all continuance wears 
To keep us youngsters harmlessly amused. '^ 

Out of the midst of the Supreme Court itself 
comes testimony to the change our laws are un- 
dergoing. Justice Holmes encouragingly re- 
marks ; 

*Hliat it is unavoidable that judges base their judg- 
ments upon broad considerations of policy, to which 
the traditions of the bench would hardly have toler- 
ated a reference fifty years ago. ' ' * 

The fight for the confirmation by the Senate of 
the President's nomination of Mr. Brandeis for 

*"The Common Law," p. 78. 



UNJUST LAWS 153 

the Supreme Court was the people's fight to 
put into the Supreme Court a proven exponent 
of the living law. The action of the court since 
then has justified the instinct of the people. The 
curbing of patent monopolies; the extension of 
the anti-rebating clauses of the interstate com- 
merce act; the women's minimum wage and 
men's hours of service laws of many States, sus- 
tained by the decision upholding the two Oregon 
statutes ; the upholding of the constitutionality of 
the Adamson Eight-Hour Law by one vote, — all 
of these important Supreme Court decisions are 
significant advantages of a living, rather than a 
literal, interpretation of our Constitution. 

Mr. George Gordon Battle, after a valuable re- 
view of notable decisions affecting labor, con- 
cludes that, on the whole, they tend to become 
more sympathetic, and are disposed to take into 
consideration public policy.* This applies to labor 
legislation, not to strikes, which we saw were at 
present adversely dealt with. 

As a result, perhaps, of war alarms, reaction 
against labor unions has appeared in judicial de- 
cisions. President Frank J. Hayes, of the United 
Mine Workers of America, at the biennial conven- 
tion of his organization at Indianapolis, in Jan- 
uary, 1918, referred to the action of the United 
States Supreme Court sustaining the injunction 

* " Address before the People's Forum," p. 16. 
See also George Gorham Groat, "Attitude of American Courts 
in Labor Cases." Columbia University, 1911. 



154 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

which prohibits his organization from soliciting 
employees of a coal company to become members 
of the organization, and said : 

**In this crisis the Sherman anti-trust act, and other 
Federal statutes are set aside to permit the formation 
of exporting trusts and similar pools, some as if by 
administrative action and some by express congressional 
laws. It seems, however, to be declared an open season 
by the Federal judiciary for hunting labor unions ; and 
this convention should not adjourn without taking some 
decisive steps for laying before Congress the situation 
raised by these decisions and of securing legislative 
assurance against their repetition.'' 

Working-class Control as Unjust as Capital- 
class Control 

We cannot put the people behind the law 
merely by taking power away from the capital- 
istic class and by giving it to the working-class. 
Our problem would not be solved by transferring 
political power from the capitalistic minority to 
the proletariat majority. Working-class control 
would only swing the pendulum to the other ex- 
treme and give us working-class justice, just as 
now we have a capitalistic justice. And we are 
well enough aware that one control, if we are 
talking about arbitrary exercise of class power, 
would be as bad as another. A working-class 
control would be as unjust as a capitalistic con- 
trol, for it, too, would be one-sided. 

The working-class outlook, on the whole, it has 



UNJUST LAWS 155 

unfortunately to be noted, is not broad, and some 
of the decisions adverse to labor we are obliged 
to account for (and this is admitted by labor 
men themselves) as the result of immature legis- 
lation undertaken at the hasty and querulous call 
of labor. Some working-men blame their own 
class for the adverse judicial decisions, and even 
contend that most of the labor laws declared un- 
constitutional have been declared so justly. The 
trouble with the laws, they say, is not so much 
with the courts as with labor itself, or its legal 
representatives ; for the trouble is in the instincts 
of the working-class. The instincts of the work- 
ing-class are to procure some sort of legislation 
that will protect them, and that will injure, some- 
how or other, the corporations, by giving small 
business advantage over corporations. Much of 
the legislation in the interest of labor has, as can 
be seen, discriminated against corporations and 
also in favor of local labor as against race and 
nationality. Not only was it easier for the 
courts, but incumbent upon them, to declare such 
legislation unconstitutional. The fault may lie 
in the wrong instincts of the working-class, or in 
the attempt on the part of legislators to satisfy 
labor by passing some sort of legislation in its 
favor, but of such a nature as to make the dec- 
laration of its illegality certain. 

**W. S. Carter, president of the Brotherhood of Loco- 
motive Firemen and Enginemen, spoke from the heart 



156 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

recently when he said in addressing an audience of 
brotherhood men : * Congressmen have long since learned 
that to oppose the designs of the wealthy men of the 
United States is to bring upon themselves an avalanche 
of political opposition that surpasses in its intensity and 
efficiency even Prussian militarism. When members of 
these brotherhoods can readily be hired by the funds con- 
tributed to a political campaign by these same wealthy 
men to defeat for election congressmen and others who 
fought for the legislation objectionable to wealth, let us 
not be too quick to condemn congressmen. . . . When 
working people are politically honest and have sufficient 
political intelligence to distinguish friends from foes, 
much of which they now bitterly complain will dis- 
appear/ '* * 



Naeeow the Gulf Between Stability and 
Progkess 

If capitalistic control of legislation is intol- 
erable, and if working-class control would be no 
better, must we not look for a mean between capi- 
talistic control and working-class control; that is 
to say, for relation between the two that will give 
to neither undue power? 

** Descriptively speaking, the ideal basis for law, 
using the word in the narrower sense, would be one 
which would result in obtaining the greatest good for 
the greatest number by securing exact justice between 
man and man, and between man and the state. This, 

*"Is Labor for Labor?", the Evening Call, January 16, 1918. 



UNJUST LAWS 157 

as we know, was the generic basis of the common 
law.''* 

The complaint of the people today is not only 
against precedent or prejudice ruling in place of 
justice; their complaint is not only of undemo- 
cratic influences and ignorance vested with judicial 
authority. They complain of the idea current of 
justice, that it is founded upon property right, 
upon sovereign rights, and not on a modern 
humane estimate of man and his needs in a demo- 
cratic state. 

But we need not only humane contact with our 
social and economic problems ; we need also intel- 
lectual contact. A democracy should never forget 
the warning of John Stuart Mill : ^ ^ The future of 
mankind will be greatly imperiled if great ques- 
tions are left to be fought out between ignorant 
change and ignorant opposition to change.'' 

Sir Henry Maine noted the conflict between law 
and progress. *^Law,'' he said, **is stable; the 
societies we are speaking of are progressive. 
The greater or less happiness of a people de- 
pends on the degree of promptitude with which 
the gulf is narrowed.'' 

* Judge Lindley M, Garrison, " Ideal Basis for Law," p. 11. 



li 



VIII 

ARE RICH AMERICANS AIDING 
AMERC ANIZATION ? 



"... private munificence moved by the spirit of high public 
duty has never been shown on a finer scale than by American 
plutocracy working in a democratic atmosphere. Materialist, 
practical, and matter-of-fact as the world of America may be 
judged, or may perhaps rightly judge itself, everybody recog- 
nizes that commingled with all that is a strange elasticity, a 
pliancy, an intellectual subtlety, a ready excitability of response 
to high ideals, that older worlds do not surpass, even if they 
can be said to have equalled it." 

Viscount Morley's Recollections, 
Vol. II, p. 109. 

"He conceived it to be a fundamentally mistaken policy to 
use the surplus good of each generation to repair the wastage 
that it wrought. . . . He soon perceived that it was in the 
political field and through political agencies that his cause must 
advance." 

Joseph Fels' Life, 
By Mary Fels, p. 79. 



CHAPTER VIII 

ARE RICH AMERICANS AIDING 
AMERICANIZATION ? 

AMERICA must deal gently with its rich men; 
-^^ they are a natural American product like big 
trees, tall grain, and mammoth vegetables. Our 
virgin soil and virgin forests, our water power, 
minerals, coal and oil, had to fall, under a system 
of private ownership, into somebody's hands. The 
possessors of these bounties of nature are our 
rich men. 

Then, too, the growth of cities, under our fac- 
tory and our mercantile system, which diverted to 
city life hands that had been supplanted on the 
land by wonder-working agricultural machinery, 
increased land values mechanically and enriched 
landowners. 

The private ownership of the machinery of 
production; the exploitation of new mechanical 
powers ; the competition of machinery with human 
labor ; the bargaining with labor on an individual 
and commodity basis, again produced rich men. 

But, after all, the rich pay a heavy price, — 
blindness, hatred, and fear. 

An inheritor of great wealth, under the obses- 

161 



162 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

sion that every one is after his money, makes no 
close friendships but from youth to age wanders 
over the world in his yacht, suspecting every one 
he meets. A young man representing enormous 
interests responded to the summons of the Indus- 
trial Commission expecting fully to be assassi- 
nated. An American banker, a companion and 
benefactor of kings, could say to a companion at 
luncheon: **I never have any fun. I am worried 
all the time;'' and again to a friend at a funeral 
in a New York church: **I wish I were in that 
coffin. ' ' 



How THE Rich Can Help 

There are three ways in which the rich can 
assist the adjustment of the poor, particularly the 
foreign-born, to American institutions and can 
co-operate in their Americanization. 

1. As taxpayers and law-makers; that is, as 
contributors to the income of the community and 
as designators by political influence of the way 
the corporate wealth shall be expended. 

2. As benefactors; that is, by direct gifts of 
money to objects and institutions which they 
philanthropically establish and develop. 

3. By representing ideal Americanism ; that is, 
by their personal influence. 

Are the rich Americans then aiding the adjust- 
ment of the poor and foreign-born to American 
institutions in these ways — as taxpayers and law- 



ARE RICH AMERICANS AIDING! 163 

makers; as benefactors and philanthropists, as 
model Americans? 

The wealth of America in July, 1917, was esti- 
mated as $240,000,000,000. Of course, the figure 
is changing all the time and just now has been 
increased by war profits. Our wealth is possessed, 
for the most part, by less than five hundred thou- 
sand persons, if we take the number that paid the 
federal income tax. How is this vast wealth used 
directly for the benefit of the poor? What is 
wealth doing, for instance, to prevent the grossest 
evidences of maladjustment, such as disease, pov- 
erty, vice, vagabondage, crime? 

The Fight Against Disease 

"Wealth is not helping conscientiously the peo- 
ple's fight against disease. The mortality tables 
depend upon the tax rates and these are fixed to 
please the pockets of the rich. I shall not forget 
my astonishment when a New York alderman told 
me that the amount of sickness in New York de- 
pended upon the Board of Estimate and Appor- 
tionment. I had supposed that *^God in his wise 
providence ' ' had something to do with it. No, the 
life and death of the poor are in the pocketbooks 
of the rich. For the money at the disposal of the 
city government depends upon the amount that the 
taxpayers' associations, the real estate interests, 
the city contractors, the public utility companies 
desire the city to expend. Some years ago a street 



164 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

cleaning commissioner in New York asked for an 
extra appropriation — as I recall it, some $86,000. 
He did not get it until he had made the city under- 
stand that the piles of filth on the East Side would 
not **stay put'' but would dry and blow germs of 
disease into all parts of the city. 

Remember, too, that half the disease and death 
in the United States is preventable and that pre- 
vention is purchasable. 

**That a well-to-do class, properly fed and 
clothed and with opportunity of leisure, will be 
less susceptible to disease and death than a 
poverty-stricken class, ill-fed and overworked, has 
been repeatedly shown by statistics."* ^^Hard 
times increase the death-rate." When General 
Gorgas was asked how to improve health condi- 
tions in the United States he is reported to have 
replied : ^ ' Raise wages. ' ' Are the rich inclined to 
raise taxes or wages as a health measure? 

As for American poverty, it is officially stated 
that fifty per cent, is due to sickness. A good deal 
of the remainder depends upon causes like de- 
ficiency in industrial education, lack of employ- 
ment, lack of industrial insurance to support fami- 
lies in times of sickness, lack of old-age insurance. 

Developing and Eliminating the Defections 

Below the ranks of the poor who struggle indus- 
trially with varying success to keep their heads 

* Report on National Vitality, pp. 22, 23. 



ARE EICH AMERICANS AIDING? 165 

above water, are the paupers who have become 
submerged. **Very few of the paupers are so 
solely because of misfortune, ' * says Henry H. 
Goddard, in his great book on ^^Feeble-Minded- 
ness/' ^^Investigations of our almshouses show 
that a considerable proportion of inmates are 
mentally defective. They were defective children. 
Their parents and grandparents were defective — 
some of them. They should have been looked 
after in these earlier stages of the problem.'* 
Society should have protected them. Within 
three years a New York judge said to me: 
*^ There is no place in the State to which I can 
send a defective until he has committed a crime." 

The defectives in Dr. Goddard 's tables are in 
many cases suspiciously connected with children's 
diseases or with what are called the social dis- 
eases, — again matters over which society can exer- 
cise control. 

Dr. Prince A. Morrow, who was our greatest au- 
thority on social diseases, said, ^'The extermina- 
tion of social diseases would probably mean the 
elimination of at least one-half of the institutions 
for defectives. ' ' American wealth is not fighting 
poverty seriously. 

Vice is largely associated with defective phys- 
ical and mental conditions. One significant record 
comes from Geneva, Illinois, made by Dr. 
Bridgman. She found that of 104 girls in that 
reformatory, committed for an immoral life, 97 
per cent, were feeble-minded. ' ^ This does not by 



166 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

any means indicate that 97 per cent, of prostitutes 
are feeble-minded, because it is only natural to 
expect that the feeble-minded ones would be the 
ones to be caught and sent to institutions. This 
figure, nevertheless, gives some idea of the preva- 
lence of the feeble-minded in this traffic. ' ' * Fifty 
per cent, of feeble-minded is authoritatively said 
to exist among women of the street.f 

Vageants 

Vagabondage is a very serious maladjustment 
to social conditions; it seems to fly in the face 
of settled social life, more even than crime and 
vice. The vagrant, however, is often an honest 
working-man who has left home to better himself 
and has never successfully established economic 
connections in the fields of his ambition ; too proud 
to return home a failure he drifts along until he 
finds himself a tramp — a hobo. 

Day laborers, too, in hard times, easily fall into 
the ranks below them, — of vagrants. Striking 
workmen are often arrested and sentenced as 
vagrants to the satisfaction of conservative 
interests. 

I stood at the application window of the Munici- 
pal Lodging House in New York one winter night, 
as the homeless applied for beds. To my surprise 
the majority were soldierly-looking men around 

* Henry H. Goddard, " Feeble-Mindedness : Its Cause and Con- 
eequence," pp. 15, 17. t Supra. 



ARE RICH AMERICANS AIDING? 167 

thirty-five years of age. There seemed to be many 
foreign-born, to judge from the records, who had 
been in this country five years, but who had never 
got regular employment, never *^ caught on," 
industrially. 

Laziness is now scientifically diagnosed as ab- 
normal and a sign of disease. The collapse and 
dispersion of a family as a result of sickness and 
unemployment is being here and there studied and 
provided against; but the whole problem of 
vagrancy should have Federal supervision. The 
problem of vagrancy seems particularly suscep- 
tible of great improvement at the hands of a 
national system of labor bureaus.* 

Crime Preventable 

As for crime. Dr. Glueck, the psychiatrist at 
Sing Sing, reports that 87 per cent, of the men 
he has examined since August, 1916, might just 
as properly be in the wards of hospitals as in the 
cells of Sing Sing; that 28 per cent, are defective 
and 12 per cent, insane.f Again, a condition 
that better social organization could have pre- 
vented. A teacher of trades to prisoners in 
one of our city prisons told me that if trades 
were taught in our public schools by which 
boys could earn their living, there would be 
much less crime. **But vagrancy and crime are, 

* " British System Labor Exchanges," U. S. Department of 
Labor Bulletin No. 206. 

t Dr. Bernard Glueck, Mental Hygiene, January, 1918. 



168 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

to a surprising extent, due to lack of employ- 
ment. '^ * 

In other words, a more social use of the wealth 
of the community would change every figure in 
this list of pernicious enemies of national effi- 
ciency — disease, poverty, vice, vagabondage, and 
crime. 

Are Gifts Made in the Right Dikection? 

Are rich Americans making gifts which con- 
tribute rapidly to the adjustment of the poor? 
Are their benefactions melting down inequalities 
and peculiarities brought from other countries 
and classes? 

There seems to be no limit to the amount Ameri- 
can millionaires will give to colleges, medical 
schools, technical schools, art museums, and 
libraries. These are undoubtedly great instru- 
mentalities for civilization and education; but 
they are not immediately powerful elements of 
assimilation for the rank and file of the popula- 
tion — nine-tenths of whom never go to school be- 
yond the age of fourteen — and have little time for 
museums and libraries. 

The sum-total of gifts, over a thousand dollars 
each, contributed in America in 1900 amounted to 
$62,461,304. In 1906 these gifts amounted to 
$106,000,000 ; in 1909 to $186,000,000. In 1916 the 

*Dr. W. D. P. Bliss, "Unemployment," U. S. Department of 
Labor and N. Y. Association for Improving the Condition of the 
Poor, Report for the year ending September 30, 1916. 



ARE RICH AMERICANS AIDING! 169 

total for gifts over $50,000 each was $65,000,000. 
There are many who think these enormous sums 
are more than the rich should be expected to con- 
tribute for the benefit of the poor. The rich men 
of America who made these gifts deserve high 
praise. But we should notice that little of this 
money finds its way to the slums of great 
cities to fight poverty in any hand-to-hand 
fashion. 

After all, while the gifts of rich Americans to 
great foundations seem in a lump sum to be large, 
the amount is small when the needs of one hun- 
dred and one millions of people are considered. 
Even in our greatest cities, where there are the 
largest benefactions, the hospital equipment for 
the care of the poor is entirely inadequate. Mean- 
while, it is found by a careful inquiry by the medi- 
cal profession that the working-classes cannot pay 
for fifty per cent, of their medical attendance. If 
in such concrete and well-understood directions as 
sickness and hospitals the gifts of the rich are not 
meeting the requirements, we may easily surmise 
that other philanthropic provisions are not likely 
to be adequate. 

As benefactors the rich of America exert prob- 
ably less influence upon the poor, especially in the 
direction of Americanization, than has been sup- 
posed. While in England Macgregor computes 
that fifteen per cent, of the advantages received 
by the working-man are not paid for by his wages, 
but proceed from philanthropies, government in- 



170 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

stitutions, etc., the amount in America must be 
very much less both because we are more widely 
spread out, and because our benevolent institu- 
tions have a shorter history. Could it also be 
because the English philanthropy is figured in 
larger sums? 

A New York multimillionaire said to a friend 
of mine : ^ ^ Do you know, if America contributed 
to the Red Cross Fund in proportion to what 
Canada has contributed, that instead of a hun- 
dred millions we should have given a billion and 
a half. We Americans are ^pikers' in the matter 
of giving. ' ^ Then he added significantly : * * I am 
not going to be a piker,'' and proceeded to spend 
over a million for an original and constructive 
public service. 

Tyeanny of Wealth and Its Conservation 

Wealth and its conservation represents on the 
whole old age and its fears. In the nature of the 
case, therefore, wealth cannot assist the adjust- 
ment of the worker because it is the coming up 
of the worker to greater power that it dreads. 
Wealth's fears are best served by labor's 
weakness. 

There is a psychological ground upon which we 
can base the statement that wealth will not assist 
poverty to the extent of making it a competi- 
tor or until it becomes independent and self- 
sufficient, which is the very essence of Ameri- 



J 



ARE RICH AMERICANS AIDING? 171 

canization. The psychological antagonism of the 
younger generation to the older, which is a fun- 
damental attitude, out of which flow great social 
consequences, shows itself in political theories and 
practice. This revolt at authority of the father 
is the source of revolutionary programs in states 
where the rulers force the authoritative attitude 
upon the people. The Czar was the Little Father 
and his subjects were his children, with the result 
that Russia was a breeding place of anarchists, 
nihilism, socialism, and all manner of attack upon 
his ^^papaism." But the attitude of czar, kaiser, 
emperor, of aristocracies or junkerdom, is not 
confined to the individual or classes so named; 
it pertains and clings to groups that have great 
stakes to lose and fear their weakness as being 
in the numerical minority — groups that consume 
by their standards of life incomes that could give 
comfort, education, and culture to thousands of 
working-people and their families. 

Rich Americans who add to their wealth by 
monopoly, by privilege, by corruption — legislative, 
judicial, and police — represent in a democracy the 
authority and tyranny of the old world which 
we Americans are at war to displace. There 
are probably rich men in America as much dis- 
turbed by our citizens as the Czar was by his sub- 
jects. Rich Americans under this view retard the 
constitutional adjustment of the immigrant and 
of the working-classes and hasten a revolutionary 
adjustment. America cannot cure anarchism by 



172 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

deportation ; for it is not entirely an over-seas 
product. 

Rich Americans, for the most part, have no con- 
ception that their country has problems that their 
money won't settle; troubles that philanthropy, 
the police, and Billy Sunday cannot cure. They 
will give millions for education and medicine but 
not a cent for changing the rules of the political 
and business game or for new social and economic 
ideas. They will endow universities, not for the 
country's good, but to produce more successful 
men like themselves — more money-makers. The 
rich seem to have little conception of the organic 
problems of society; the economic foundation of 
the government, or of a nation which is a brother- 
hood and not a mere Camarilla for the distribu- 
tion of privilege. 

Personal Influence of the Rich in Cities 

Are the rich by their personal influence assist- 
ing Americanization? In considering the rich 
American and his influence we must look particu- 
larly in cities, for that is the place which permits 
largest expenditure, widest contact with many 
sides of life, and where the rich and poor rub 
elbows. 

Cities have been called ulcers. They swell 
and fester on the surface of human population, 
which is only healthy in its sparser distribu- 
tion. They are full of filth, poverty, and vice. 



ARE RICH AMERICANS AIDING? 173 

They breed criminals. They graduate thieves, 
murderers, and pimps as naturally as universi- 
ties graduate scholars. 

This is not the worst. Cities not only produce 
vice and crime, they also consume virtue. More 
horrible than a disease, they appear like dia- 
bolical personalities which subsist upon the 
strength, health, virtue, and noble aspiration pro- 
duced in the country. A city is a Moloch, the 
fagots of its fires are human bodies and souls. 

A great city like New York furnishes graphic 
examples of discontent in one family, composed of 
factory and of office workers, all restless over 
prodigal display of wealth, seen close at hand. 
Such a family group shows in itself the ease with 
which the feeling of the fundamental dissatisfac- 
tion at the distribution of attractive things may 
arise. In one picture it displays not only the 
social desires of the ^^soft-handed'' city worker, 
but also the discontent of the laborer, — made all 
the more prominent by close contact with the lav- 
ishness of ^*Big Business," and of moneyed ease. 

Cities Aee Funeeal Pykes for Human Bodies 
AND Souls 

Cities are, therefore, considered abnormal, es- 
pecially by minds keen to beauty, and by hearts 
easily wrung at the sight of suffering. The 
truth is, however, that a city is the school of the 
spirit. Spirituality grows in cities by means of 



174 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

the variety and complexity of human relation- 
ships. 

If the city is a school of the spirit, why have 
the great cities of the past been the seats of a 
depravity that can never be disassociated from 
them? Because they have neither seen nor have 
they fulfilled their higher intention. Cities have 
been misunderstood and abused. They have been 
treated as a rich field of plunder for the few, 
rather than of spiritual relationships for the 
many. Mr. H. G. Wells predicts a future popu- 
lation of forty million for the city of New York. 
Does this mean despair of human nature, or the 
soul's best chance of service and knowledge? 

Vice Flourishes While Riches Increase 

A police force cannot be corrupt without the 
support of **big interests,*' which are benefited 
by lenient police administration. 

Since both political parties in our larger cities 
are financially supported by individuals or cor- 
porations that expect favors or that fear harm 
from office-holders or from legislation, it is our 
rich men in great cities, and not the ignorant vot- 
ers, who are responsible for bad government. We 
have not **as good a government as we deserve,*' 
but we have as good a government as money can 
buy. Now the more we pay in bribery the worse 
the government is. The higher the bribe the worse 
the service. A government manipulated by pri- 



ARE RICH AMERICANS AIDING? 175 

vate corporations is doomed. It becomes a battle- 
field for giants, who shelter themselves behind the 
patriotic devices of great parties while the people 
perish. 

The competition of business and of profes- 
sional life is so fierce, and the prizes for success 
in great cities so fix the attention of the hardest 
workers and most competent men, that generally 
these have no time for politics. The unskilled and 
less equipped men enter the neglected and deserted 
field and cultivate it. The politician makes money 
by cultivating the opportunity of office, just as 
the business man makes money by neglecting 
it. Both think of money and not of the city. The 
business man indeed is, in a way, more culpable. 
If he is so intent upon gain that he will enjoy 
the privilege of institutions favorable for his 
purposes, but will lift no honest finger to pro- 
tect them, he is morally lower than the man who 
at least keeps these institutions running — even if 
he charges a heavy salvage for thus rescuing the 
abandoned ship of state. 

There can be no doubt, too, that the hot pur- 
suit of wealth is a baneful example. We see it 
politically and socially. The politician is ap- 
proached for a favor which has a money value 
for the recipient. Why should he be making 
other men's fortunes? He therefore asks the 
question which is the motto of all corruption, 
**What is there in it for me?'' If a rich man 
may lie about his taxable property, why may not 



176 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

a politician lie if it is worth his while? At any 
rate, some of the methods of the rich in secur- 
ing and protecting their property are openly used 
as excuses for these corrupt political methods. 

The ability and integrity of a metropolis are 
continually being drawn upon for the manage- 
ment of great enterprises. The reformer or the 
interested citizen finds it difficult to consider the 
vested interests intrusted to him and at the same 
time consider the city's welfare. He soon for- 
gets his independence and becomes dumb to the 
entreaties of friends who implore his assistance 
in purifying the government. Suppose he does 
take part in such movements. The clique he at- 
tacks immediately attacks his corporation. 

Careless and Extravagant Wealth Forgets 
Social Obligation 

The careless use of money breeds vice and 
crime. In connection with a hotel robbery in New 
York, the manager of the hotel said that it was 
very difficult to find honest hotel servants, espe- 
cially waiters. They saw so much money squan- 
dered on dress, food, and drink that they came 
to regard the rich as fair prey. They feel to- 
wards the rich as a thief feels towards a drunkard 
asleep in a doorway; why leave him to throw away 
his money or for some one else to rob. 

The records of the United States Department 
of Commerce, previous to the European War^ 



ARE RICH AMERICANS AIDING? 177 

show importations of ^^ precious and semi-pre- 
cious stones" amounting annually to nearly 
fifty million dollars. Even in 1916 importation of 
jewels amounted to over forty millions. 

New York is the city to which, as to a Mecca, 
the rich from all over the country come. They 
have put money in their purse, and they are in 
New York for a good time. Their banners read, 
^* Money is no object. '^ ^^The best is none too 
good." 

A friend of mine, a New York broker, received 
a message from important men in another city 
announcing that they were coming to Manhattan 
for a couple of weeks. The telegram ended: 
**Can^t you put us on to something for our ex- 
penses?" My friend knew of a stock that was 
being marked up, and ^^ bought" some for the dis- 
tinguished visitors. They ^^made" ten tliousand 
dollars. We can easily understand how these men 
could spend ten thousand dollars in two weeks 
when the money came in such a fashion. 

In addition to this large transient population of 
rich pleasure-seekers, there are the many success- 
ful rich from other cities who come here to live. 
New York is a pleasanter place than San Fran- 
cisco, Butte, Chicago, or Pittsburgh. They come 
for pleasure. But pleasure for the rich is only 
to be got through wide social connection. The 
expenditure of these great fortunes levied by New 
York, is, with some splendid exceptions, in the 
direction of social impression. The shorter purses 



178 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

are always crying out at the advance in prices 
made by the appearance of Pittsburgh fortunes, 
or munition fortunes, and the higher figures the 
new millions are willing to pay for clothes, horses, 
houses, servants, motors, yachts, or old masters. 

Remember, too, that few New Yorkers live 
within sight of their shops, stores, mills, or mines. 
The human toil associated with the production of 
wealth, and the pathetic disparity between the 
lives of his working-people and his own luxury, 
ordinarily tend to restrain a man's extravagance 
at the mint of his fortunes. This restraint is re- 
moved when, as in New York, the sources of 
wealth are distant, as is the case especially with 
those who have migrated from the scenes of their 
successful struggles. Extravagance in New York 
has not the conscientious check of the memory of 
toil. The greasy operative, the grimy miner, the 
sweaty iron worker, the bloody ^* packer, '' the 
panting stoker, can all be forgotten in the evening 
sheen of Fifth Avenue asphalt, and in the social 
remoteness of fashionable quarters. 

Another thing is to be observed. Since social 
advantages and pleasures are largely the aim of 
these migrant fortunes, the city and its affairs 
are no more thought of than if the owner were in 
Paris or in Rome. The negative example of 
neglect of civic responsibility, added to the posi- 
tive example of vice-breeding waste, seriously 
accuses the rich of a certain class in New York. 

There are one or two other ways, channels of 



ARE RICH AMERICANS AIDING? 179 

real and harmful influence, by which the rich in 
New York, in a degree that cannot be said of 
other cities in America, affect the poor. There 
is no city in the world where all classes of men 
and women are so well dressed. Such an outward 
appearance of comfort and even of elegance is 
not a disadvantage. The most salient impression 
of the first Sound Money Parade was produced by 
the fact that up Fifth Avenue were marching 
one hundred and fifteen thousand men, ununi- 
formed but all remarkably well dressed. Twenty 
years later the Preparedness Parade of 1916 gave 
the same impression of unexampled prosperity. 

When we note, as we are forced to in New 
York, the extremes of feminine fashion, and its 
expense; when further we perceive shop-girls 
emulating their customers, we discover the peril- 
ous range of vicious temptation for the poor 
girls who love to display mock finery and arti- 
ficial complexions. 

There is another influence not free from its 
contribution of misunderstanding between classes 
in our great cities. This is the effect produced by 
those who figure as well-to-do in the eyes of the 
world, but whose relation to servants and trades- 
people is marked by closest economy. The rich 
are too careless about their servants ; as the num- 
ber increases accommodations decrease. Besides 
this phase there is another, that of neglected 
bills. Expensive tailors admit that in their ex- 
orbitant charges they have to consider and in- 



180 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

elude the loss from slow accounts, and from 
those who love to wear the best without paying. 
This effect of the apparently rich upon the poor 
is decidedly unfavorable. The poor lose money 
and respect at the same time. 

The Tenement House and Maladjustment 

As land values increase, which they must do 
in a growing country, and especially in a metrop- 
olis surrounded by water, the rental value of the 
land must increase. As land values mount up, 
the buildings which cover land grow larger. The 
tenement-homes grow smaller, and children are 
crowded into the street. That mediaeval death by 
torture — the room which came together and nar- 
rowed itself in every dimension upon its victim — 
is a reality today in New York. The mechanical 
pressure is rent. 

The tenement-house problem in our American 
cities is one that wealth has studied but has not 
solved. In New York philanthropic building com- 
panies cannot use land that costs more than 
$10,000 a lot (25 ft. x 100 ft.). This limitation 
forces model tenement building far uptown — be- 
yond the congested districts. The size of the pri- 
vate house lot, the normal unit, has bedeviled the 
tenement-house construction. The attempt con- 
tinually being made to house many families in 
place of one, on a 25-foot lot, has resulted 
in covering too large a percentage of the lot 



ARE RICH AMERICANS AIDING? 181 

and in banishing light and air from interior 
rooms. 

American cities might well learn of Glasgow, 
London, and Berlin the advantage of municipal 
dwellings built on large areas with play space, 
kindergarten-rooms, up-to-date laundry facilities 
— in fact, everything that makes for the health 
and convenience of the family, yet at a moderate 
rental. 

In the city of New York approximately 2,866,000 
—that is to say, about 650,000 or 657,000 fami- 
lies — are living in apartments for which they pay 
under $25 a month rent. This rental means about 
one-fourth of an income of $1,200 a year. But a 
rent much below $25 a month in a congested part 
of the city will not secure bathrooms and rooms 
for families with several members. 

Overcrowded, dark rooms and bad ventilation 
are friends of the saloon and of all the vicious and 
criminal influences that make the saloon their club- 
house. Here then is an eminently suitable field 
for community wealth to be expended in a fashion 
to assist the Americanization of the poor — par- 
ticularly the immigrant who on landing finds his 
home in the lowest grade of tenements. To pro- 
vide good homes is surely to help Americanization. 

The tenements are largely owned by the rich 
and could be bettered. But here, too, business 
considerations prevail. It is claimed the land 
downtown will be needed so soon for commercial 
purposes, that it would be throwing money away 



182 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

to build, meanwhile, improved tenements. The 
city grows by such great strides that these fore- 
casts are plausible, though often mistaken or mis- 
applied. 

Even after learning the lesson of complete in- 
dividualism taught by diminished land values; 
even after passing zoning laws, New York in 
order to utilize old residences for tenements is 
willing to go back on fifteen years of progress in 
its housing program. 

Putting the Question Faiely 

The responsibility of the rich for the poor is 
not merely a critical responsibility, that is to say, 
not a question merely involving the injurious 
effect of riches on any side of the social fabric. 
The relation of the rich to the poor extends to the 
question of the value of philanthropic effort, the 
rich man's usual recommendation as a cure for 
social and industrial ills. The relation of the rich 
to the poor extends also to the roots of law and 
justice as, after all, possibly founded in group 
power, privilege and in class legislation rather 
than in the dictates of common humanity. 

The rich, as landlords much concerned over 
taxation, can be regarded as controlling the hous- 
ing problem, the school system, the money spent 
on public health and, in general, the rate of civic 
improvement. Above all, the private ownership 
of public utilities fundamentally affects the in- 



ARE RICH AMERICANS AIDING? 183 

come and the administration of municipal gov- 
ernment. 

^^ After the war/^ says the National Municipal 
League, ^^you will hear the cry of efficiency and 
economy in government louder than ever, espe- 
cially when cities begin to broaden their functions 
and exercise new ones in coping with new prob- 
lems. But they should be foreseen. '^ Is it not 
the duty of the rich, who should be especially well 
educated and experienced, to take the lead in the 
new glory of American cities? 

If the rich American has not conspicuously 
assisted the newcomers to this country in their 
adjustment to its ideas and institutions, he may 
have earnestly supposed that his principles and 
his labors contributed to the best interests of the 
country. As a standard by which to measure his 
contribution, I would suggest a sentence from a 
play by Ferdinand Lassalle: 

'*We owe ourselves to those great purposes for the 
accomplishment of which generations are sent into the 
world as workmen. I have done what I could. I feel 
relieved and happy like one who has honorably paid 
his debt." 

Have rich Americans paid this debt? 

American democracy has not learned Nietz- 
sche's lesson: *^Life is that which must ever sur- 
pass itself. '^ Like a rabble sacking a palace it 
wastes valuable time putting on the clothes and 



184 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

accouterments of courts and kings, parading 
for self-inspection through the hall of mirrors, 
or calling to each other in childish envy or de- 
light. When shall we recover ourselves and quit 
this masquerade of the old world! When shall we 
found a new world of ^^folks," all participating 
in the fruit of man's struggle with nature! Dem- 
ocracy like life is that which must ' ' ever surpass 
itself.'' 



IX 



THE WASTE OF IGNORANCE AND 
COMPETITION 



"It is no baseness for the greatest to descend and look into 
their own estate." 

Bacon, 
on Expense. 



" There is enough food wasted daily in New York to give argu- 
ment to an army of anarchists." 

Sib Hebbebt Beebbohm Tbee. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE WASTE OF IGNORANCE AND 
COMPETITION 

rpHE Commercial Economy Board appointed by 
-*• the Advisory Committee of the Council of 
National Defense has the task of cutting down 
waste in the distribution of all commodities dur- 
ing the war. The Board hopes to obtain the co- 
operation of citizens in reducing waste. 

How important, therefore, it is that we should 
know the directions in which the country is waste- 
ful. For instance, Mr. Vanderlip, President of 
the National City Bank of New York, is quoted 
by Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in his pamphlet, 
**The Personal Relation to Industry,'' as saying: 
**I have seen the statement that in a single year 
the loss that could be attributed to labor disturb- 
ances in this country totals more than a billion 
dollars.'' 

If the recommendation of Mr. Gompers to La- 
bor is accepted and carried out, — namely that 
there should be no strikes during the war, — this 
annual billion dollars will be saved, a very tidy 
sum, especially in war times. 

As war is fundamentally an economic drive for 
larger means of wealth, or for defending what 

187 



188 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

we have, or to secure better terms for our 
trade, — wages, profits, and prices can make war 
or peace. 

Suppose that the United States finds itself at 
a loss, after the European struggle is ended, be- 
cause the warring countries have greater indus- 
trial efficiency and can undersell it. Suppose 
Asiatic markets are closed to us. At any rate, 
suppose cheaper Asiatic labor going into manu- 
facture can undersell us, we shall be forced back 
upon efficiency and the saving of waste for pros- 
perity or into war with countries beating us 
industrially. 

All the * ^ isms ' ' which make the capitalists have 
bad dreams — anarchy, socialism, communism, and 
the rest, — are merely devices thought of by 
the poor, or their champions, for giving them 
more opportunity, for providing a richer and 
more interesting life. If, therefore, a republic 
like America can discover ways of bringing these 
results to pass without the aid of any of these 
terrifying isms, such information ought to be 
heeded. 

The United States could pay Great Britain's 
war debts out of its annual waste. We waste in 
easily controlled directions an amount of property 
equal to what our people earn. We squander every 
twelve months more than the combined resources 
of the central banks of England, France, Italy, 
Spain, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, 
Japan, and Germany. If this amount could be 



THE WASTE OF IGNORANCE 189 

saved and distributed pro rata to our people the 
inadequate income of the average working-man's 
family would be changed to one that placed him 
in a class of economic independence. 

MoKAL Obligations to Prevent Waste 

A nation has no right to permit the degradation 
of its working-classes, their inadequate educa- 
tion, their physical deterioration, when amazing 
amounts of property are carelessly allowed to 
perish. A nation has a moral obligation to pre- 
vent waste in the interests of those who lack the 
necessaries of life and the social opportunity 
which is built upon substantial income. 

The saving of waste is, in fact, so large a sub- 
ject that it runs quite beyond the items of value 
which are carelessly destroyed. The whole prob- 
lem of individual as well as social life is prac- 
tically the preservation of its potential energy 
and the prevention of waste. The new psychol- 
ogy, which sums up in the word ^ libido'' the 
various energies of the individual, can be studied 
in its relation to the direction of this expenditure. 
The problem of the individual is to preserve the 
libido from diffusion and to direct it to the high- 
est strength and most valuable use. Good and 
bad, right and wrong, are defined by this direc- 
tion or misdirection.* Our personal life problem 
is prevention of waste of vital forces. 

* Compare William White, "The Mechanisms of Character 
Formation," p. 320. 



190 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

Waste Due to Poor Organization and Method 

''Already we are beginning to see that, in the light 
of its possibilities, industry today is inconceivably 
wasteful. The raw product is won from the earth, it is 
transported hundreds of miles over expensive railroads, 
it passes through ten or twenty different manipulators, 
is manufactured, and passes again through an in- 
finitely complicated series of operations to the ulti- 
mate consumer. The great water-power resources of 
this country are said to be not one-seventh developed. 
Yet their primary power alone 'exceeds our entire me- 
chanical power in use, would operate every mill, drive 
every spindle, propel every train and boat, and light 
every city, town, and village in the country. ' ^ ' * 

The Waste of Mental Power 

Two tabulations of men of genius have been 
made which have been received by scientific men 
as of considerable authority. Sir Francis Galton, 
taking one hundred Englishmen of recognized 
ability, found only four per cent, to be from the 
working-class. M. Odin made a study of 6,382 
men of genius in France. ** Labor'' was repre- 
sented by nine per cent. The contrast is so 
sharp between labor and the upper classes as to 
lead Monsieur Odin to exclaim ^'Genius is in 
things, not in man.'' Classified, Odin's list is 
as follows: 

* J. Russell Smith, " Industrial and Commercial Geography," 
p. 398. 



THE WASTE OF IGNORANCE 191 

Nobility 25.5^ 

Government officials 20.0^ 

Liberal professions 23.0^ 

Bourgeoisie 11.6^ 

Manual laborers 9.8^ 



Only a little over one-fifth of the talented were 
produced by the two lower classes. 

These figures confirm the observation of those 
who have to do with the poor, such as clergymen, 
social workers, etc., who find unusual latent ca- 
pacity locked up in conditions of life and of occu- 
pation from which it cannot win opportunity for 
its development. 

When it is remembered also that ninety per 
cent, of the school children of America go no far- 
ther than the grammar school, it can be seen how 
little is done to develop by education the latent 
powers of the mind. Furthermore, when it is 
observed that the method of secondary and uni- 
versity education in America has little in it ex- 
cept formal studies supposed to develop the 
powers of thought, — little for thought itself 
upon the problems of life, we are not surprised 
at the comparatively small production of ability 
distinguished enough to be called talent or genius 
in gigantic populations of tens of millions. *^The 
rational and causal in education are hardly ever 
appealed to.^' When education really brings out 
what is in our youth, democracy will make mag- 
ical contributions to civilization. 



192 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

''But by waste I mean (says Henry W. Nevin- 
son) the multitude of boys and girls who never get 
a chance of fulfilling their inborn capacities. The coun- 
try 's greatest shame and disaster arise from the custom 
which makes the line between the educated and the un- 
educated follow the line between the rich and the poor, 
almost without deviation. That a nature capable of 
high development should be precluded by poverty from 
all development is the deepest of personal and national 
disasters, though it happen, as it does happen, several 
thousand times a year. Physical waste is bad enough — 
the waste of strength and health that could easily be re- 
tained by fresh air, open spaces, and decent food, and 
is so retained among well-to-do children. This physical 
waste has already created such a broad distinction that 
foreigners coming among us detect two species of the 
English people. But the mental waste is worse. 

''Boys who might become classical scholars (he writes) 
stick labels onto parcels for ten years, Others who have 
literary gifts clear out a brewer's vat. Keal thinkers 
work as porters in metal warehouses, and after shoul- 
dering iron fittings for eleven hours a day, find it diffi- 
cult to set their minds in order. . . . With even the 
average boy there is a marked waste of mental capital 
between the ages of ten and thirty, and the aggregate 
loss to the country is heavy indeed/' * 

Defense of Waste 

Waste is even a defended part of our industrial 
system. In some manufactures, as, for instance, 
cotton spinning, it is cheaper to permit waste and 
to speed the machinery, thereby securing larger 

* Henry W. Nevinson, " Essays in Rebellion," p. 82. 



THE WASTE OF IGNORANCE 193 

product, than to go more slowly with a smaller 
production and provide time for the operatives 
to save waste. 

The shutting down of works when competing 
businesses consolidate is a common loss of pro- 
duction. 

The burning or destruction of crops where 
there is not a good market in order to produce 
high prices is a common practice. Excessive 
freight and commission charges discourage pro- 
duction. Not long ago Jersey fishermen dumped 
into the sea 1,000 barrels of fish weighing 250 
pounds each, because the freight and commission 
charges would not be met by the price of the fish 
in New York. 

The pigeon-holing of invention, or the rejection 
of inventions, by companies in control of given 
outputs, and having capital invested in old ma- 
chinery, is responsible for enormous waste in 
terms of possible product. Invention is the 
method by which the world advances in its power 
over nature; to throttle invention is to kill 
progress. 

Causes of Waste 

Our theory of ownership permits every one to 
do as he wishes with his property, even to destroy 
it, and does not encourage a general co-operation, 
except for personal gain. 

Whatever justification may be offered for this 



194 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

waste, the destruction of the values involved 
limits the amount of wealth at the disposal of the 
community, and this limitation of wealth is con- 
sciously accomplished by the wealth-producing 
class. The present organization of business con- 
siders waste or suppression of production to be 
legitimate. The curtailing of economic waste 
under a competitive and private ownership sys- 
tem seems well-nigh impossible, and its advan- 
tage when secured is too largely added to divi- 
dends, not wages. 

Extent of Our Economic Waste 

The following is a significant collection of 
items of annual waste in the United States, 
which I have picked up in casual reading : * 

1. Waste through Carelessness and Ignorance 

Natural Resources 

Soil erosion $ 50,000,000 

Flood and freshet 238,000,000 

Non-use of water power 600,000,000 

Poor Method 

Lumbering, waste of by-product . . 300,000,000 

Mining, waste of by-product 55,000,000 

Fuel 500,000,000 

Fire losses 235,000,000 

Cost of insurance 250,000,000 

Fire prevention 450,000,000 

Forest fires 50,000,000 

In smoke, by poor stoking 600,000,000 

Gas 45,000,000 

Inefficiency in national. State, and 

daylight municipal work 300,000,000 

Preventable Diseases of Livestock 93,000,000 

Insect and Animal Pests 

Rats 100,000,000 

Rodents (exclusive of rats) 110,236,000 

Insects 420,000,000 

* See Appendix. 



THE WASTE OF IGNORANCE 195 

2. Waste through Faulty Economics 

Transportation Losses 

Railroad mismanagement 600,000,000 

Transportation accidents 25,000,000 

Careless handling of fish, eggs, fruit 40,000,000 

Decay and loss in transit 1,000,500,000 

Labor Maladjustments 

Occupational diseases 1,000,000,000 

Industrial accidents 13,000,000 

Unemployment 3,500,000,000 

Strikes and lockouts 1,000,000,000 

Domestic inefficiency 300,000,000 

3. Social Waste 

Personal Extravagance 

Cheap shows 60,000,000 

Tobacco 825,000,000 

Alcohol 1,600,000,000 

Chewing gum 15,000,000 

Drugs 27,500,000 

Patent medicine 75,476,032 

Soft drinks 107,536,000 

Confectionery 178,000,000 

Food in families 1,012,777,750 

Defective Classes 

Backward pupils 26,000,000 

Feeble-minded 85,000,000 

Insane 135,000,000 

Disease 

Preventable disease 1,000,000,000 

Death of children 2,627,300,000 

Illiteracy 1,500,000,000 

Homicide and suicide 40,000,000 

$21,189,325,782 

Besides the above forms of waste, amounting 
to $21,000,000,000, there are others of enormous 
cost, such as: the care and unproductiveness of 
criminals, care and unproductiveness of alco- 
holics, care and unproductiveness of drug fiends, 
fatigue from overwork, over-capitalization in the 
United States, industrial inefficiency, bankruptcy, 
undeveloped land in cities. 

A. M. Simons in an article, ** Wasting Human 



196 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

Life," quoted in a pamplilet by J. Pickering 
Putnam, gives the following summary of wasted 
wealth : 

Summary of Wasted Wealth 

Using imperfect machinery $ 3,000,000,000 

Twenty-five per cent, of factories idle, could pro- 
duce 5,000,000,000 

Waste of coke ovens 50,000,000 

Restriction of patents 2,000,000,000 

Manufacture of useless and harmful articles 1,000,000,000 

Imperfect methods of agriculture 18,000,000,000 

Maintenance of fences 1,250,000,000 

Lands used for horses 1,000,000,000 

Multiplied production through application of power 27,000,000,000 

Bad roads 1,000,000,000 

Marketing of farm products 4,500,000,000 

Advertising 2,000,000,000 

Fire and insurance (unnecessary) 500,000,000 

Military and naval expenditures 600,000,000 

Unemployed 8,000,000,000 

Individual kitchens and housekeeping plants .... 1,728,000,000 
Possible production of nine million people need- 
lessly killed 18,000,000,000 

Sickness exclusive of nursing by families 1,000,000,000 

Extending average productive life twenty years . . 10,000,000,000 

Total $105,628,000,000 

Sidney A. Reeve puts our waste from com- 
petition at $25,000,000,000. These figures are 
founded upon census returns — production com- 
pared with advertisement, office upkeep, salaries 
of traveling salesmen, et cetera, in fact, all devices 
for securing a profit, not creating products. 



Theee Ahe Many *^ Wokst Forms of Waste '* 

Various * ^ authorities ' ^ have their private 
** worst forms'' of waste. 

Mr. Hoover reckons the waste in every Ameri- 



THE WASTE OF IGNORANCE 197 

can family to amount to $50 a year. According 
to the census of 1910 there were in America 
20,255,555 families ; accordingly there is an annual 
family waste of $1,012,777,750. 

Carl Vrooman, Assistant Secretary of Agricul- 
ture, states that the prize waste of the champion 
wasters, the world ^s greatest single preventable 
economic leak, is barnyard fertilizer. 

Professor Irving Fisher warns us of the eco- 
nomic waste of preventable disease; the money 
value of increased vitality. Estimating the num- 
ber of the preventable deaths at 800,000, and each 
life as an industrial loss of $1,700, an annual pre- 
ventable loss is shown of $1,360,000,000.^ 

^ ^ The average length of life at the close of the 
sixteenth century in Europe was only between 18 
and 20 years ; at the close of the eighteenth a lit- 
tle over 30 ; today it is between 38 and 40 years. 
At least fourteen years could be added to human 
life by the partial elimination of preventable 
diseases. '' 

Daylight saving in the United States for the 
^ve summer months 1917 (in the lighting bill 
alone) would have yielded $140,000,000.1 It 
would also have left unused one million tons 
of coal. 

* Report on National Vitality, Irving Fisher, p. 119. 
t Marcus M. Marks, Municipal Review, 1917, pp. 466-467. 



198 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

Coal Waste $500,000,000 — Inefficient Power 
Plants Largely to Blame, Says Manning 

''Washington, July 15. — According to Van H. Man- 
ning, Director of the United States Bureau of Mines, 
fully a half billion dollars was wasted last year in this 
country through the inefficient use of coal. Mr. Man- 
ning said this waste was continuing at an even greater 
rate and at a much larger penalty to the country, be- 
cause of the increase in the price of coal. 

** *Last year the United States mined six hundred 
million tons of coal, the greatest production ever wit- 
nessed in the world, and of this amount we wasted 
one hundred fifty million tons, or twenty-five per cent., 
through inefficient use. 

'* 'As an example, in the modern, efficient power 
plants of the country 20 per cent, of the heat in the 
coal consumed is converted into power, whereas in the 
small power stations the efficiency frequently drops 
below 10 per cent. The average efficiency of all steam 
power plants in the United States is probably 5 or 6 
per cent, of the energy of the coal. If it were possible 
to elevate the average efficiency to the maximum attain- 
able, about three times as much energy would be 
available.' '' 

Waste in Time 

The New York Telephone Company, July, 1917, 
printed an advertisement in the New York papers 
which stated that the Bell System handles thirty 
million telephone calls a day. **If on each of 
these calls an average of one minute could be 



THE WASTE OF IGNORANCE 199 

saved by more efficient use of the telephone, thirty 
million minutes more could be devoted to produc- 
tive work. This would be a tremendous contri- 
bution to national efficiency. It would mean a 
saving of 20,833 days of twenty-four hours each — 
a saving of fifty-seven years every day!*' 

Waste of Hiring and Firing 

One of the greatest sources of industrial waste 
in America is what is picturesquely termed 
*^ hiring and firing.'' America has to keep a sur- 
plus of labor idle to take places constantly being 
vacated on account of the maladjustment of the 
worker or the misunderstanding of the boss. This 
is largely due to a lack of early training which 
quickly adapts the worker to his job; in part it is 
due to the aims of women workers which to some 
extent are outside of success in their particular 
vocations and lead to endless change of position 
and calling. 

Mr. Magnus W. Alexander, engineer of the 
General Electric Company, at the twentieth annual 
conference of the National Association of Manu- 
facturers, said that in his opinion hiring and 
firing represents the greatest leakage in modern 
business. Twelve metal factories in six different 
States were carefully studied. 

**The factories took on during the year 42,571 
employees, or 22,031 persons more than were abso- 
lutely necessary. Each of those 22,031 persons 



200 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

cost the factories from $50 to $200 each, for broken 
tools, spoiled work, the reduced rate of produc- 
tion, and the additional office expense incurred 
through the necessity for the maintenance of an 
extra clerical force to keep track of the temporary 
workers and the hiring of foremen and assistants 
to instruct them. Altogether, it was computed, 
the unnecessary engagement of 22,031 employees 
caused the factories in question an aggregate loss 
of $831,030.'^* 

The Waste of Casual Labor 

** Casual labor is the greatest of all maladjust- 
ments. A man who changes constantly from job 
to job, with periods of idleness between, comes to 
every job demoralized, unskilled, unsteady, and 
unfit ; but casual labor, as the matter now stands, 
is still demanded in some industries. It is con- 
venient for employers. It is the employer in the 
first instance who needs readjustment. '' t 

But it is the casual laborer, being at the bottom 
of the industrial scale, who first enters the ranks 
of the unemployed in seasons of industrial de- 
pression. In the winter of 1913 and 1914 it was 
estimated that there were nine millions of people 
in the United States out of employment. This was 
a waste amounting to $13,500,000 a day for several 
months. 

Perhaps the worst phase of the position of the 

* Industrial Conservator, N. Y., April 25, 1917. 

t Edward T. Devine, " Misery and Its Causes," p. 131. 



THE WASTE OF IGNORANCE 201 

casual laborer is that no one regards him as worth 
consideration except at harvest time or in seasons 
of prosperity. He easily gravitates, it is sup- 
posed, into the yeggman, semi-criminal, or crim- 
inal class. But out of his flesh and blood the 
country to a large extent recoups itself when in 
periods of economy it retrenches. A class which 
is absolutely essential to the salvation of crops 
and to the building of railroads, wharves, reser- 
voirs, etc., has a moral claim upon the com- 
munity to be given at least a livelihood between 
hurry call periods of national expansion. 

The Army as an Absoeber of Waste 

Military organization while itself a form of 
waste in its killed and wounded — in its absorp- 
tion of national wealth for its support, munitions, 
etc., — on the other hand utilizes waste. The 
first volunteers are likely to be men of leisure, 
sportsmen, men out of work, individuals who are 
maladjusted to their surroundings ; even the hoo- 
ligans, apaches, and toughs; superfluous priests 
in countries overridden by the clergy — at last 
even small tradesmen as unnecessary distributors 
of produce. In fact, the army takes in, consciously 
or unconsciously, many classes of consumers who 
are disclosed in the glare of war as forming no 
indispensable part of the productive energies of 
the state. 

Unless a man contributes needed power to one 



202 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

of these departments of the state he is a man with- 
out a country. He is a waste product. He is un- 
assimilated under a military or even a social 
organization of the state. 

The Significance of Waste 

Heard in war-time! *^I can't imagine what a 
billion is.'* 

A good way to grasp the significance of a bil- 
lion is to picture all the people in the United States 
who travelled upon all the railroads east, west, 
north, south in a prosperous year, ending June, 
1916, and all the rides of the commuters. The 
number was 1,005,683,174. 

To understand our gigantic annual waste let us 
put the cost of waste against other figures : 

Total amount waste in United States at least. .. $21,000,000,000 

Total capital of railroads in United States 20,000,000,000 

Total bank deposits 20,000,000,000 

Great Britain's war debt, estimated to Jan., 1918 19,466,000,000 

Manufactures of United States 25,000,000,000 

Savings 6,000,000,000 

Agriculture 9,000,000,000 

Known amount of incomes in United States, 1916, 

above $3,000 by 375,515 persons 1,999,788,864 

Cost of educating 22,902,153 children year end- 
ing June, 1914 555,077,146 

**The Committee on the Standard of Living thought 
it was a safe inference, from data in their possession, 
that an income under $800, however earned, is not 
enough to permit the maintenance of a normal standard 
for a family of five persons in the city of New York, 



THE WASTE OF IGNORANCE 203 

1910. Nearly one-third of all the families studied by 
the committee with incomes from $600 to $800 were 
underfed. The average expenditure for clothing was 
less than necessary. The furnishings of apartments were 
inadequate.*'* 

Fancy the blessings for such a family if there 
were an addition to its income of $1,000 a year, 
its pro rata share of the national annual saving 
of waste from carelessness and ignorance: it 
would be lifted into the class of economic inde- 
pendence with all the blessings of additional edu- 
cation, nourishment, leisure, and recreation. 

The question of waste ranges in immediate 
practical importance from the saving of military 
energy and mental penetration, by regulating 
camp alcohol and prostitution, through the saving 
of coal, food, etc., to the levying of super-tax upon 
great incomes. Advocates for the rich claim that 
they consume little more than do the poor,— mean- 
ing that three meals a day and clothing are the 
limit of consumption and, after all, the difference 
between ^^eat and grow thin'' and **eat and grow 
faf ought not be 80 per cent, super-tax. 

These apologists for the consuming power of the 
rich, who would reduce it to breakfast foods, for- 
get the cost of what is vulgarly called * * style, ' ' or 
fashion. Ostentation and extravagance enslave 
and waste the labor of thousands of personal 
attendants who set the stage upon which wealth 
plays its part. The imprisonment of the Czar, 

* " Misery and Its Causes," Edward T. Devine, pp. 107-108. 



204 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

we are told, left thousands of servants without 
a situation. Then, too, there is **the vicarious 
expenditure'' of those connected with wealth — 
the women and children. 

Let us end with Veblen's trenchant analysis 
of wealth and waste. *'In an industrial com- 
munity this propensity for emulation expresses 
itself in pecuniary emulation, and this, so far 
as regards the western communities of the pres- 
ent, is virtually equivalent to saying that it ex- 
presses itself in some form of conspicuous waste. 
The need of conspicuous waste, therefore, stands 
ready to absorb any increase in the communi- 
ties' industrial efficiency or output of goods, 
after the most elementary physical wants have 
been provided. 

^^The popular reprobation of waste goes to 
say that in order to be at peace with himself 
the common man must be able to see in any and 
all human effort and human enjoyment an en- 
hancement of life and well-being in the whole." * 

*T. Veblen, "The Theory of a Leisure Class," pp. 98, 110. 



X 

MENTAL ADJUSTMENT THROUGH 

ORGANIZED EFFORTS FOR 

FREE SPEECH 



"An undesirable society ... is one which internally and 
externally sets up barriers to free intercourse and communication 
of experiences. A society which makeG provision for participa- 
tion in its good of all its members on equal terms and which 
secures flexible readjustment of its institutions through inter- 
action of the different forms of associated life is in so far 
democratic." 

John Dewey, 
Democracy and Education, Chap. VII. 

" We must insist in every instance that the parties come into 
each other's presence and there discuss the issues between them, 
and not separately in places which have no communication with 
each other." 

From President Wilson's Address to the Convention of the 
American Federation of Labor, Buffalo, November 12, 1917. 

" Let us speak thereof, ye wisest ones, even though it be bad. 
To be silent is worse; all suppressed truths become poisonous. 

And let everything break up which — can break up by our 
truths! Many a house is still to be built! — 

Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra. 



CHAPTER X 

MENTAL ADJUSTMENT THROUGH ORGAN- 
IZED EFFORTS FOR FREE SPEECH 

rp HE hardest time to keep liberty alive is during 
-*■ a war for freedom. When a column of fire is 
guiding the victorious armies of truth and jus- 
tice, a pillar of cloud seems to be obscuring truth 
and justice from those left at home. 

Freedom of speech and freedom of the press 
are the two antennae of democracy, but they are 
hard to protect even in a democracy. The Con- 
stitution of the United States grants freedom of 
speech : 

* ' Congress shall make no law respecting an establish- 
ment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise 
thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the 
press ; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, 
and to petition the Government for a redress of 
grievances. ' ' * 

Police regulation with its power to prevent dis- 
turbances of the peace and disorderly conduct 
easily negatives freedom of speech; and in war- 
time not only does government censorship 
largely suppress it but militaristic control and 
influence give it no quarter. 

* Constitution of the United States, Amendments, Article 1. 

207 



208 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

Suppression obeys a psychological law, and is 
followed by the emergence of the suppressed in- 
stinct or energy in another form. Free speech, 
if denied street corners and open places, flees to 
halls; refused the use of halls, it seeks the back 
rooms of clubs ; prohibited all expression, violence 
becomes the only outlet of these pent-up moral 
forces. 

The Fobum Heabs the Cky of the Expkopeiated 

The purpose of the Open Forum movement is 
to afford the freest opportunity for the busi- 
ness man and the laboring man to arrive, by open 
discussion, at a better understanding of the vital 
questions affecting their relationship ; to discover 
the drift of industrial progress ; to guard against 
the menace of unjust industrial development; to 
forestall, by reasonable and humane ways, the 
settlement by sterner methods; to do its part to- 
ward the essential end that ^^the arrogance and 
whip of Capital and the distrust and evil weap- 
ons of Labor be laid aside, so that their hands 
may be free to join in the grip of a common 
interest.^' * 

A brilliant critic of American life, H. G. Wells, 
with a clairvoyant perception of conditions in 
this country, has declared: 

**The American community is discovering a secular 

extinction of opportunity and the appearance of pow- 

* Joseph S. Auerbach, North American Review, December, 1905. 



MENTAL ADJUSTMENT 209 

ers against which individual enterprise and competi- 
tion are hopeless. Enormous sections of the American 
public are losing their faith in any personal chance of 
growing rich and truly free, and are developing the con- 
sciousness of an expropriated class. ' ' * 

But Mr. Wells makes no discovery. He is 
merely an observer like others before him. 

*'What wrong road have we taken/' asked 
Emerson in 1848, *^that all the improvements in 
machinery have helped everybody but the opera- 
tives? Here they have incurably hurt.'' Thirty 
years later Henry George startled complacent 
America by asking why poverty persisted while 
wealth increased. His unpalatable formula, ^^the 
poor are growing poorer and the rich are grow- 
ing richer," was made more agreeable by Carroll 
D. Wright, who explained that as the poor were 
not improving their condition at the rate the rich 
were advancing, the distance between them was 
increasing. Without doubt it is becoming vastly 
harder, as John Mitchell points out, for a work- 
ing-man to advance beyond his sort of job or out 
of his class. 

^ ^ The fact which is most full of meaning at the 
end of the nineteenth century," wrote Professor 
Macgregor in his *^ Evolution of Industry," ^4s 
the existence of an absolute surplus or human 
residue which is pauper in fact though not in 
name" (page 106). 

Individuals are not wholly to blame for this con- 

* H. G. Wells, " The Future in America," p. 81. 



210 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

dition of things; industrial evolutionary forces, 
not understood until the mischief was done, are 
also responsible. We can see now that the 
working-man under the financial handling of the 
modern factory system lost his status; that his 
wages practically buy oif his interest in the firm ; 
that machinery and joint stock companies con- 
tributed to push apart employers and employees, 
and that *^the nineteenth century in working out 
of the idea of power by means of combination has 
stratified and classified the people to an enor- 
mous extent. " * So economic analysis confirms 
and explains the separation of classes that condi- 
tions indicated and that statistics proved. 

Evidently these processes of class separation, 
as inhuman in their effects as war itself, cannot 
go on indefinitely without a catastrophe. In 
America they have already led to bloodshed. We 
are constantly presented, here in America, with 
working models of civil war. *^ Habit alone,'* 
says William James, *4s what keeps us all within 
the bounds of ordinance and saves the children 
of fortune from the envious uprisings of the 
poor." But habits can be changed, especially 
under the incentive of starvation or injustice. 

These deadly clashes, which breed a worse ha- 
tred than that which gives rise to them, cannot 
be banished from our attention by calling them 
mere exhibitions of an industrial unrest as old as 
the Pyramids. The exodus of the Hebrews from 

*Macgregor's "Evolution of Industry," p. 56. 



MENTAL ADJUSTMENT 211 

Egypt was a strike in which the workers did not 
return to their work, but migrated. The French 
Revolution was a strike which cost the employers 
their heads and their status. Nor can we for- 
ever ** jolly" the laborer by telling him that he 
possesses luxuries that kings of old did not 
dream of. Jauntily to talk about the inevitable- 
ness of industrial unrest does not harmonize class 
differences. The question is, What is going to 
stop this pulling asunder before it is too late? 
What is going to bring the hostile industrial 
forces of our national life together? What is go- 
ing to make us really one people — in sjnupathies, 
ideals, and institutions? The labor question, of 
course, is a nuisance ; but we can say of it what 
Emerson said of the question of slavery : * * It has 
a right to be heard and the people plagued with 
it until something is done.'' 

We are safe in saying that the desired results 
of industrial peace and of national unity are not 
to be secured by improving coercive machinery. 
To destroy trade-unions; to organize State con- 
stabularies ; to deny free speech or give it impos- 
sible definition ; to increase the list of offenses for 
which arrest is equivalent to conviction; to rob 
working-men of adequate political representation, 
is not a solution of our problems of class es- 
trangement. 



212 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

Capital, Politics, Chukch, and Education Shun 

Labor 

Nor are we encouraged to look for intellectual 
and sympathetic leadership where ordinarily 
some leadership is expected. Our most powerful 
financiers and captains of industry are not 
ashamed to testify on the witness stand that they 
have not studied the problems involved in the 
present issues — that they do not understand the 
labor question. Naturally, therefore, they can- 
not offer any help. 

Our political parties represent in their primary 
differences not economic, but constitutional posi- 
tions. They are essentially conservative; even 
their liberalism is considerate of the small capi- 
talist rather than of the proletariat. The New 
York Constitutional Convention gave no heed to 
the memorial and recommendations of the labor 
organizations. A great newspaper even taunted 
the labor men with their inability to retaliate. 
I discover no friendliness in ordinary American 
politics toward the problems of the working- 
classes. This is Mr. Wilson's strength. 

The clergy notably display a more human sym- 
pathy with the working-man's economic prob- 
lems, but officially the churches are timid, and 
their laymen are too often reactionary. In the 
churches there is being developed a new economic 
orthodoxy which enfeebles their contribution to 
the labor problem. Some high ecclesiastics go so 



MENTAL ADJUSTMENT 213 

far as to declare that the procession of life with 
its most exalted spiritual vision is passing along 
outside the Church. On the other hand, there are 
some who quote Jesus to the effect that the divi- 
sion of wealth is not a religious problem. 

Colleges do not teach economics and sociology 
in a fashion to meet the situation. There are a few 
professors to whom many people are indebted. 
But our colleges have neither led public opinion 
on the labor problem nor qualified their graduates 
to deal with it. The trustees of one of our lead- 
ing universities have declared publicly that eco- 
nomics should teach only what is agreeable to 
capitalists. 

The working-people are well aware of the hos- 
tility of the capitalistic classes and institutions. 
They look for no help outside themselves. They 
have been deceived and disappointed so often by 
pretended friends that they resent help from out- 
side their own class; to accept it has become a 
mark of class disloyalty. 

Some Volunteer Agencies 

In default of constructive help from accredited 
leaders in business, politics, religion, and educa- 
tion, volunteers have come forward with new 
agencies which attempt to correct destructive in- 
dustrial tendencies; to bring together the ex- 
tremes of democracy; to spread a more hopeful 
theory of human nature than that upon which 



214 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

conservative fears are reared, and to broaden the 
reach of economic education. 

University settlements, founded about thirty- 
years ago, set out to bring the culture of Eng- 
lish college cloisters to London slums. *^They 
are homes in the poorer quarters of a city 
where educated men and women may come in 
daily personal contact with people.*' Fred- 
eric Denison Maurice's Working-men's College, 
founded in 1860; Edward Denison 's attempt to 
make his home in the East End of London in 
1867 ; Arnold Toynbee 's residence in Whitechapel 
with the Rev. S. A. Barnett of St. Jude's in 1875, 
and the building of Toynbee Hall in 1885, mark 
the steps, and at the same time disclose the col- 
lege and church impulse, that led to the rise of 
university settlements. 

In 1883 the Rev. Dr. William S. Rainsford be- 
came Rector of St. George's Church, New York. 
Before taking charge of the parish or forming 
especial plans for carrying it on, he had a survey 
made of the neighborhood. He then founded 
such organizations as seemed to him suitable for 
meeting the racial, local, or class needs of his 
parish. This was the first scientific diagnosis of 
parochial work that I am aware of, and it devel- 
oped a group of social institutions around it that 
gave the name * institutional church" to St. 
George's, and to the large number of parishes 
since then more or less modeled upon it. 

The essence of institutional church work is 



MENTAL ADJUSTMENT 215 

home extension. It undertakes to make up for 
the poverty-stricken, limited, and often vicious 
surroundings of the tenement-house by supervis- 
ing entertainment, encouraging education and 
physical culture, — in fact, by doing for the chil- 
dren and youth of the poor what a well-to-do 
family would like to do for its own. 

Afterward came the social settlements which 
attempted more complete co-operation with what- 
ever initiative the slums themselves disclosed. 
They recognized how much the working-man is 
trying to do for himself, and proffered their as- 
sistance. They put educated and friendly energy 
into existing popular institutions. They aided 
neighborhood agencies, school boards, health 
boards, libraries, the use of parks, labor unions, 
advantageous racial customs, etc. 

More recently, community centers have organ- 
ized a neighborhood club in the schoolhouse. 
Freed from racial, religious, and political antag- 
onism, the schoolhouse, because a patriotic and 
neutral institution, is their rallying place. 

They have created a self-governing citizens' 
movement, taking in not only grown-ups, but 
young people of both sexes. Games, dancing, 
athletics, evening classes, lectures, political ad- 
dresses, ** movies," etc., are provided. Started in 
Rochester, New York, there are now scores of 
these community centers in the United States, es- 
pecially in the West. The importance of the 
community center has become so widely under- 



216 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

stood that a training school for leaders has been 
established in New York; national conferences 
have been held, and in the spring of 1917 the State 
of New York ordered school boards to place 
schoolhouses at the disposal of community center 
groups in the interests of Americanization. 

The Open Forum as Common Ground 

The Open Forum is another undertaking to 
provide a common meeting-place for the rich and 
the poor, free from traditional impediments; to 
bring together in a humane atmosphere the ex- 
tremes of society. Like the agencies we have 
been considering, the Open Forum bases its ac- 
tion not upon dogmas, traditions, or precedents, 
but upon the urgent needs of the present and an 
intelligent view of the future. 

Nietzsche says: ^^The important question for 
you is not where did you come from, but where are 
you going?" Walter Lippmann condenses this 
into his maxim: ^* Substitute purpose for tradi- 
tion.'' The new psychology tells us that ^*a 
philosophical study of living beings shows that 
they may be graded according to the amount of 
purpose they manifest. ' ' * But where are we go- 
ing? What should be our purpose? Is it not 
safe to say (if we pay attention to the lessons of 
industrial evolution) that the world is moving 
toward a greater democracy, toward the spread 

* L. E. Emerson, Psychoanalytic Review, October, 1915, p. 425. 



MENTAL ADJUSTMENT 217 

of freedom, opportunity, and wealth — in fact, 
toward the highest development for the largest 
number of human beings by means of the mate- 
rial and spiritual advantages of self-government? 

CooPEE Union 

The Open Forum, although a new device for 
amplifying social and industrial conditions, has 
had an interesting history: The People's Insti- 
tute was established in 1897 and offered in 
Cooper Union, at the head of the Bowery, New 
York, a strategic meeting-place for ideas and 
men. Charles Sprague-Smith, the founder, con- 
ceived the plan while a professor of comparative 
literature in Columbia. He discovered in litera- 
ture the story of the common laws of social 
progress, and he longed, as he told me, to get his 
hands directly into the material of human life. 
So he gave up comparative literature and set 
about arousing enthusiasm among the people for 
a freer, fuller existence. 

At the People's Institute, lecturers of wide 
reputation addressed East Side audiences of 
thirty nationalities. The audience could ask 
questions, but could not make speeches. The 
lecture was often preceded by music and recita- 
tions, but not by recognized religious exercises. 
Later a clubhouse was founded and many valu- 
able forms of social service undertaken. 

The invited speakers, under the grilling of an 



218 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

astute and well-read democracy, were taught 
never to make a statement which they could not 
back up; they also learned the protective value 
of a good chairman (Mr. Sprague-Smith) who 
would not permit them to be put into too deep 
holes by the audience, although he could not pre- 
vent them sometimes from jumping in them- 
selves to their own chagrin, and to the amuse- 
ment of their tormentors. Professor Charles 
Sprague-Smith, philologist, poet, educator in 
good will, champion of the people, died in middle 
life as the result of overwork in behalf of this 
great undertaking. The Cooper Union meetings 
maintain the high standards set by him. 

The Public Fobum 

The *' Public Forum (Inc.) of the Church of the 
Ascension'* was founded in 1907 by the Rector 
of the parish and the Rev. Alexander Irvine. If 
crowds will listen to soap-box orators on street 
corners; if workmen in factories will give part 
of their precious noon recess to listen to Y. M. 
C. A. speakers, should not religious bodies, which 
control more good auditoriums than anybody 
else, and have less use for them, offer hospi- 
tality in their churches to such groups, and if 
necessary organize these opportunities under fa- 
vorable conditions? The Public Forum under- 
took to make a church a shelter for what might 
otherwise have been open-air meetings of all 



MENTAL ADJUSTMENT 219 

sorts and conditions of men, interested in dis- 
cussing modern social and industrial ideas. It 
was a frank attempt by a church to find out what 
working-men, according to their own showing, 
wanted, and what they considered to be the duty 
of the church. The Public Forum audience may 
debate the subject as well as ask questions. 

Since the founding of this Forum, numerous 
churches in New York and the neighborhood 
have opened similar Forums — notably the Church 
of the Holy Trinity, in Brooklyn, of which the 
Eev. J. Howard Melish is Rector; the Church 
of the Messiah, where the Rev. John Haynes 
Holmes is Pastor, and the Free Synagogue, under 
Dr. Stephen S. Wise. Even as far away as 
Houma, Louisiana, St. Matthews (Episcopal) 
Church has established a Forum. There is also 
a Forum in Starr King's old parish (Unitarian) 
in San Francisco. Church Forums received the 
endorsement of the Universalists at their Chicago 
Convention of 1914. 

Ford Ball 

Ford Hall, on Beacon Hill, Boston, was founded 
by the Baptist Union in 1908. It offers a plat- 
form of a broad and sympathetic type, it pub- 
lishes a paper of its proceedings, and carries on 
social work. It permits the audience to question 
the speaker, but it does not invite speaking from 
the audience. The Ford Hall meetings, through 



220 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

their extension committees, have been instru- 
mental in establishing in New England munici- 
palities, towns, and schools more than thirty 
Forums, modeled more or less closely upon Ford 
Hall, but with distinctive undertakings described 
by the specific conditions of their position. Mr. 
George Coleman, who is responsible for Ford 
Hall, has exceptional clearness of vision and 
breadth of sympathy. 

Other Forums 

The Labor Temple was opened by the Presby- 
terian Board of Missions, at Second Avenue and 
Fourteenth Street, New York, in an old building 
that was formerly a parish church. Owing to its 
situation on the East Side, and the close connec- 
tion between its founder, the Rev. Charles 
Stelzle and the trade-union movement, in which 
he thoroughly believes, and also because it spe- 
cializes in labor matters, the Labor Temple 
has developed a highly unified work, now in 
charge of Rev. Jonathan C. Day, and keeps very 
closely in touch with a large number of working- 
people. 

The Labor Forum is a still later and different 
type of Forum. It meets in a public school- 
house. It has no religious exercises or motives, 
nor is it neutral (as radicals regard the Church 
Forums). The Labor Forum is the announced 
advocate of the working-classes. An enthusiastic, 



MENTAL ADJUSTMENT 221 

devoted, and self-sacrificing leader, Mr. Carl 
Beck, is responsible for its origin and excellence. 

Schoolhouses are used by many other Forums, 
notably by the Bronx Open Forum under the 
leadership of the Honorable Edward Polak, the 
Civic Forum of Brooklyn, and the vigorous Fo- 
rums of the Brooklyn People's Institute. 

In addition to Forums which use the English 
language, there are Forums that use Italian and 
Eussian — as the ''Foro Italiano, a Ford Hall 
dirimpetto la State House'' in Boston, and a Rus- 
sian Forum in New York. 

Another type of Forum is * ^ The Hungry Club ' ' 
of Pittsburgh. According to its able and enthusi- 
astic Secretary, Charles C. Cooper, ^^The Hungry 
Club" is the only organization of its kind in the 
world. **Its membership consists of several hun- 
dred business and professional men who ^want to 
know.' It has no constitution nor by-laws. It 
has no formal organization. It has no business 
sessions and no regular officials. It never takes 
a vote. It never endorses anything. It is Pitts- 
burgh's Open Forum for the presentation of both 
sides of public questions." 

The Forum has proved particularly attractive 
to recent immigrants. Its democracy corresponds 
to their native ideal — an ideal too often destroyed 
by their early experiences in their adopted coun- 
try. The Forum helps them to some discrimina- 
tion in fixing blame for their ill-treatment ; it of- 
fers them a mouthpiece for the woes they ran 



222 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

away from on the other side of the water and for 
those they have run into in America. 

There are some three hundred Open Forums 
actually in operation; as many more groups are 
seeking organization. Forums have been con- 
sidered such admirable agencies for popular edu- 
cation in current public problems, that in some 
States where constitutional conventions are to be 
held, Forums have been founded as preparatory 
schools for discussion and study of constitutional 
questions. Indiana has more than a hundred 
such Forums. Arkansas is likely to follow this 
lead. 

The Open Forum National Council has offices in 
Boston ; it maintains a speakers ' bureau and pub- 
lishes a monthly magazine — The Community 
Forum. 

Some fifty of the Forums in and around New 
York are incorporated as The Congress of 
Forums, which forms a part of the national 
organization. 

Breaking the Shackles of ShjEnce 

In spite of the diverse elements which make up 
the membership of an Open Forum, it would be 
a mistake to suppose that it is a Cave of Adul- 
1am, made up of malcontents, ^ * down-and-outers, ' ' 
and blatherskites. In fact, nothing could be fur- 
ther from the truth. 

The questions asked and the speeches made 



MENTAL ADJUSTMENT 223 

from the audience of the Public Forum give sur- 
prising evidences of knowledge, seriousness, and 
ability. 

The Forum is a device by which the people be- 
come articulate. ** Silence is for the poor," de- 
clared Lamennais, the French priest, who labored 
for the freedom of the working-classes within 
the Roman Church, and was driven out of it. 
Any institution that gives voice to the poor is an 
emancipator, for it breaks their worst shackle — 
silence. The cause that can be heard is in a way 
to secure its ends. A people that is articulate 
is on its way to victory. Open Forums offer, as 
does nothing else today, an opportunity for the 
poor to be heard — a timely instrument just now 
when free speech has been so much abridged in 
public places. Dread of free speech has come to 
such a pass that the hall in Paterson which 
burned down after Emma Goldman spoke in it 
was considered by many religious people to have 
been directly destroyed by divine wrath. Our na- 
tional optimism inclines us to avoid serious prob- 
lems ; our easy material progress renders us for- 
getful of underlying difficulties. We are irritated 
at criticism of our institutions. We club and jail 
unpleasant prophets. The May Day Labor Pa- 
rade in 1914 had this banner: ^^You may jail our 
leaders, but you cannot jail our ideas." America 
must offer more safety valves to such explosive 
truths, to such suppression and injustice, espe- 
cially when assailed by the new slogan of Privi- 



224 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

lege: **You may have the right, but we have the 
power. ' ' 

Much of the present-day labor trouble is 
caused by the disappearance of the old-fashioned 
employer of labor who was successful in building 
up a business because he knew his men and how 
to treat them. The absentee employer is an eco- 
nomic danger. The striker is in revolt against 
hidden forces, not against persons, for he does 
not know them. The Open Forum, by contriving 
a better acquaintance between classes, helps this 
situation. One violent radical told me that he 
learned in the Public Forum that capitalists were 
human. 



The Open Forum Combines the University and 
THE Town Meeting 

A Public Forum unites the university with the 
town meeting. An expert is called in to lead the 
conferences; then the people thrash out the sub- 
ject in open debate. The Forum is giving back 
to America the town meeting which the growth of 
cities has robbed it of. 

A defect of democracy is its distrust and 
neglect of the expert, and its substitution of the 
grandiose notion that one man is as g^od as 
another, for all the purposes of the state. In 
America this disposition, at once ignorant and in- 
jurious to democratic institutions, was fostered 
by the pioneer life in colonial America, which was 



MENTAL ADJUSTMENT 225 

so simple in its requirements as to be satisfied by 
the rough-hewn ability and independence of indi- 
viduals; and later, by its agricultural pursuits 
which did not permit the holder of the plow to 
leave his fields indefinitely for legislative and po- 
litical service. Today, with quite a different order 
of society, the traditions of these earlier periods 
have persisted, especially among politicians, in 
the face of the growing need of experts and in 
the face of the great scientific and mechanical 
developments of our time. 

Democracy must become used to experts, must 
desire them, and enthusiastically place them in 
commanding positions. I know of no better 
place to cure this shyness of the people toward 
specially trained ability than the Forum plat- 
form, where the expert can not only instruct his 
audience on a specially selected subject of cur- 
rent importance, but will patiently and good- 
naturedly answer scores of questions, will listen 
to a public discussion by the audience, and in a 
friendly and wise way sum up what has been said. 

Perhaps the Forum is a better fashion of pre- 
senting the university to the people than is the 
so-called university extension movement, which 
too largely deals with purely cultural subjects and 
depends for its speakers upon professional 
teachers and lecturers. The Forum chooses cur- 
rent subjects of importance, and gravitates to 
** burning questions''; it then selects the most 
distinguished expert upon the topic whose serv- 



226 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

ices (generally gratuitous) it can command, and 
this often involves going far afield from academic 
reputations, who is then brought to an eager audi- 
ence already schooled in the technique of social 
and economic literature. 

At a time when the town meeting, which accord- 
ing to Ralph Waldo Emerson was the school of 
our early democracy, has fallen into disuse owing 
to the greatly increased number of our popula- 
tion living under city charters, the creation of a 
body of persons, rich and poor, educated and un- 
educated, holding all manner of political views — 
brought together for the discussion of important 
problems, is returning one of the best elements of 
democracy to wide and frequent use. 

Open Forums are not only harmonizers and 
educators of classes into a truer social unity. 
Their practical accomplishment also may be 
valuable. This is important to observe, because 
critics of Open Forums rarely notice the inevi- 
table demand of Forum audiences for emotional 
relief, not in talk alone, but in beneficent social 
activity. They pass resolutions, send memor- 
ials, appoint committees, and carry on humane 
works. 

An officer of the Public Forum (Inc.) led to Al- 
bany the committee whose labors resulted in the 
appointment of the New York Factory Commis- 
sion and consequent legislation. The Public 
Forum organized the first democratically run com- 
munity center in New York. 



MENTAL ADJUSTMENT 227 

The Prison Committee of the Public Forum 
brought to the attention of officials abuses in the 
Penitentiary and Workhouse, which are in proc- 
ess of being remedied. 

The Legal Committee provided volunteer 
counsel in the Woman's Night Court for defend- 
ants too poor or too ignorant to secure it for 
themselves. 

The Eelief Bureau offered a daily ministry to 
prisoners — especially women — discharged from 
BlackwelPs Island. 

The Employment Bureau for nearly two years 
was a valuable neighborhood contribution. For 
the year ending June 30, 1917, it secured for its 
applicants 1,900 situations. 

Why Tie up a Forum with Religion? 

A question I frequently hear is : Why have the 
Open Forums (good enough things in themselves, 
no doubt) been conducted in consecrated churches 
and church buildings? What has religion to do 
with economics? In spite of an imposing list of 
advantages, why tie up this new undertaking to 
religion; why call meetings at which economics 
are talked in churches; why hold these on Sun- 
days? 

Economics are teaching the Church of today so 
much that the Church may well show some appre- 
ciation. In fact, if economics can inspire reli- 
gion, then there is a natural relationship between 



228 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

them. The present humanizing of the dismal 
science is giving new faith to the Church. The 
brotherliness of international labor unions and of 
Socialism is helping the Church to recover the 
vision of a world of peace and good will. The 
multiplication of food and clothing — their easy 
preservation and transportation — are leading the 
Church to believe that poverty can be abolished. 
The organization of vast numbers in effective 
labor point to new unity and effectiveness among 
the devout. The loyalty and self-sacrifice of the 
working-people for each other is a new Pentecost 
— a new outpouring of spiritual energy which 
speaks in strange tongues, but tells of holy things. 
In spite of the temporary recessions of the war, 
these movements are today the brightest encour- 
agements to humanity. 

A better understanding between the rich 
and poor is a moral as well as an economic 
question. 

The rich must perceive how unfair it is for 
them to waste human labor in frivolous amuse- 
ment, unnecessary possessions, and injurious con- 
sumption. Short of the winnings of roulette, 
some American business men seem to think one 
dollar is as good-looking and respectable as 
another. Why should workmen worry then be- 
cause they expect pay without giving good work 
or full time! If they could get the dollar for ab- 
solute incompetence and for no work at all, they 
would only be securing what political jobs, corpo- 



MENTAL ADJUSTMENT 229 

ration salaries, speculative pools, very often pro- 
vide for their favorites — pay for no equivalent. 
There is no more profoundly moral question than 
what a man does for his income and with his in- 
come. The relation between income and service 
must become one of the great themes of religion. 



XI 



THE ECONOMIC INFLUENCE OF 
RELIGION 



"The sooner we think straight we shall will straight." 

Henry H. Goddard, 
Feeble-Mindedness : Its Causes and Consequences, p. 407. 

" The ultimate value of every institution is the distinctively 
human effect — its effect upon conscious expression." 

John Dewey, 
Education and Democracy, p. 8. 

" With science, the old theology of the East, long in its dotage, 
begins evidently to die and disappear. But (to my mind) 
science — and maybe such will prove its principal service — as 
evidently prepares the way for One indescribably grander — 
Time's young but perfect offspring — the new theology — heir of 
the West — lusty and loving, and wondrous beautiful." 

Walt Whitman, 

quoted by John Addington Symonds in 

Walt Whitman: A Study, p. 142. 

"Where wants and needs coincide economic and moral values 
are identical." 

Prof. T. D. Carver, 
Religion and Social Justice, p. 36. 

"Character is the result of longevity, health, income, and 
knowledge, not of particular biologic traits." 

" Service, conformity to natural law, and growth are the basic 
ideas of true civilization." 

Prof. Simon N. Patten, 
Culture and War. 



I 



CHAPTER XI 

THE ECONOMIC INFLUENCE OF 
RELIGION 

CAN religion help the working-classes? The 
radical unhesitatingly replies: ^^No!'' In 
the socialist movement the workers derive from 
its founders a tradition of atheism. Besides this 
tradition, still influential, socialism preaches the 
materialistic interpretation of history. 

Beyond these two arguments for the unpopu- 
larity of religion among working-people there are 
others less theoretical. The priesthood in social 
evolution has been associated with the military and 
governmental class as its supporter and de- 
pendent. Today it is believed to stand in the 
same relation of support and dependence to the 
capitalistic class. For example, working-people 
complain that the pulpit preaches only what capi- 
talism approves. Further than this, working-peo- 
ple see plainly enough that the conspicuous tenets 
of the prevailing religions — as, for instance, the 
Golden Rule: *^Do unto others as ye would that 
they should do unto you" — are flatly contradicted 
by the business maxims of those who profess great 
respect for religion ; for example. Caveat emptor , 
Let the buyer look out for himself. In brief, 

233 



234 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

working-class radicalism defines religion as belief 
in the supernatural and regards churches as part- 
ners of capitalists; so radicalism is confident of 
religion's doom. 

*^ Devout observances are of economic impor- 
tance, ' ' Veblen rather heavily puts it, * ' as an index 
of a concomitant variation of temperament, accom- 
panying the predatory habit of mind and so indi- 
cating the presence of industrially disserviceable 
traits.'' He illustrates this disservice by the 
waste of priestly service, education, pilgrimages, 
fasts, holidays, etc. He confirms it by a theory 
that the attitude of attention to preternatural 
allies is treason to the relation of cause and effect ; 
or as our psychological friends would say, the 
clergy live in fantasy, not in reality, and so are 
an economic dead weight. 

The points that labor makes against religion 
are well founded ; but they are indictments of re- 
ligion in its most institutionalized form ; they are 
criticisms of organized religion at its worst. That 
is to say, radicalism confuses religion with the 
Church, and considers the religion of all time the 
same. 

The modern working-man in his exasperation 
at exclusion from social and industrial influence, 
has seen in the religion of the conservative classes 
not only a foe but a lie, deliberately fabricated for 
his enslavement. Although Plato did suggest 
that rulers might govern by appeal to **the mag- 
nificent lie " of an authorized religion ; yet modern 



THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGION 235 

science and modern economics assign religion its 
true place — something produced by man for him- 
self, — for his help and betterment. 

Dr. W. A. White, of Washington, a leading 
authority on psychoanalysis, assigns high value 
even to early religions. 

**He (the primitive man) used the methods of 
magic. No matter how ineffectual they were, 
however, no matter how simple and childlike, 
nevertheless we see in these methods the germs of 
our present-day science. Primitive man did the 
best he could, his means were crude, but he kept 
on trying — he was on the right path." * 

Professor Simon N. Patten points out the im- 
perative social value of religion: 

*^ Degeneration, regeneration, and the will are 
thus religion's first problems, from which all 
others are derived. When religion emphasizes 
degeneration as a starting-point, its position as- 
sumes both a scientific and a pragmatic quality. 
The subnormal — below us — is to be avoided; the 
supernormal — above us — is to be striven for. Re- 
ligion voices our opposition to the one and our 
aspiration for the other. So long as men hope 
to be better and fear to become worse, religion 
cannot die out. It cures degeneration through 
the development of character. ' ' f 

Religion has enormously helped the productive 
powers of labor. In some of the early stages of 

* " Mechanisms of Character Formation," p. 45. 
t " The New Basis of Civilization," p. 43. 



236 PAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

religion its use was so largely to protect man- 
kind from all sorts of fears that it could be called 
a method of posting sentinels, to guard man from 
the injury and unabated terrors of the unknown. 
Primitive man's ignorance of the powers of nature 
and his ascription of evil influences to the spirit- 
ual beings he fancied behind nature, would have 
overwhelmed him, had his religion not offered 
means by which he could feel that he was in the 
good grace of the injurious spiritual powers, and 
so go about his business with some peace of mind. 
Religion built a crude stockade around primitive 
man to protect him from fear of the universe. In 
a very real and concrete fashion religion was the 
salvation of the worker and his work, whether his 
labor was in war, or in hunting, or in making 
weapons, or in the delegated drudgeries per- 
formed by the women of the tribe. Let us at any 
rate be pragmatists, willing to say a good word 
for what has helped us, even if we are not clear 
about its rational foundation. 

Specifically, it must be replied to labor's ma- 
terialistic interpretation of history, that moral 
idealism is constantly modifying social conditions 
even if underlying all social movement the funda- 
mental motives are economic. In the present war, 
for example, the fundamental motives are eco- 
nomic, but thousands of men and women are vol- 
unteering their services in the army, on ambu- 
lances, in hospitals, and relief work, the sum and 
quality of whose labors, born of their fine enthusi- 



THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGION 237 

asm, may win the day and be the moral agents of 
new economic ideas and conditions. 

Does the Church affect economics at all? On 
the contrary, isn't it economics that affect the 
Church? Back of this question is the theory of 
the economic interpretation of history, which 
claims that the struggle for food underlies every- 
thing else, and that any higher cultural or spirit- 
ual force in the world can be analyzed back to 
some economic need and effort. There are econo- 
mists today who claim that the present war is 
due to the geography of the land lying between 
the Ehine and the Baltic. These are extremists. 
Both forces, economic forces and so-called moral 
forces, are influential. 

Eeligion affects economics and economics affect 
religion. No one can deny that the struggle for 
existence is the primal instinct. There is no ques- 
tion but that the first activities of mankind are for 
food. Religion is not a primary impulse; it is 
a secondary and contributory impulse. That does 
not mean that religion has not a direct influence 
upon economic affairs. 

"Human life (says Professor Seligman) has thus far 
not been exempt from the inexorable law of nature, 
with its struggle for existence through natural selection. 
This struggle has assumed three forms. We find first 
the original struggle of group with group, which in 
modern times has become the contest of people with peo- 
ple, of nation with nation. Secondly, with the differen- 



238 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

tiation of population there came the rivalry of class 
with class ; first, of the sacerdotal with the military and 
the industrial class ; later, of the moneyed interest with 
the landed interest; still later, of the labor class with 
one or all of the capitalist classes. Thirdly, we find 
within each class the competition of the individuals to 
gain the mastery in the class. These three forms of con- 
flict are in the last resort all due to the pressure of life 
upon the means of subsistence; individual competition, 
class competition, and race competition are all referable 
to the niggardliness of nature, to the inequality of 
human gifts, to the indifference of social opportunity. 
Civilization, indeed, consists in the attempt to minimize 
the evils while conserving the benefits of this hitherto 
inevitable conflict between material resources and human 
desires. As long, however, as this conflict endures, the 
primary explanation of human life must continue to be 
the economic explanation — the explanation of the ad- 
justment of material resources to human desires. This 
adjustment may be modified by esthetic, religious, and 
moral, in short, by intellectual and spiritual forces ; but 
in the last resort it still remains an adjustment of life 
to the wherewithal of life. ' * * 

**The most material elements/' says Professor 
Harnack, * * acting upon man always produce feel- 
ings and ideas which themselves act as forces in 
their turn, and stand in no simple proportionate 
relation to those material causes. Moreover, as 
long as men continue to sacrifice their possessions, 
their blood, and their life for ideal aims, it will 

* " The Economic Interpretation of History," E. R. A. Seligman, 
p. 154. 



THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGION 239 

be impossible for any one to maintain the mate- 
rialistic view of history except with the help of 
sophisms.'* 

In Roman Law jus naturale, which modified 
many conditions of humanity, was directly trace- 
able to Seneca and Stoic philosophy. I believe it 
will be found that the new *^ common sense*' eco- 
nomics of today owe much of their origin to the 
insistent representations of religion in behalf of 
the working-classes. 

Thorold Rogers holds that religious movements 
have had social effects under two heads. In the 
first place the efforts of the missionary must needs 
be directed to the material as well as the moral 
amelioration of the persons or subjects which are 
to be the subject of the mission. This is the secret 
of the success which attended the teachings of 
Zoroaster and Buddha, of early Christianity and 
early Islam. They take advantage of existing 
discontent and preach freedom, the loosening of 
chains, the opening of prisons, and the natural 
equality of man, the manifest duty of the secular 
ruler. 

The next fact is, that it is vain to attempt in 
social revolution a material improvement in the 
condition of those whom the teacher approaches 
except in times when prosperity or at least some 
degree of comfort is general. The forces of so- 
ciety make short and easy work of the outbreaks 
which despair occasionally instigates. The insur- 
rection of the Jacquerie in France in the four- 



240 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

teenth century, of the peasants in Germany in the 
sixteenth, were futile struggles, full of ferocity 
and reprisals, but were completely repressed, the 
peasants sinking back into greater misery than 
that which they strove to shake off.* 

All these authorities attach importance to the 
economic interpretation of history, but they see 
that the spiritual and intellectual, in their turn, 
affect the conditions of life. 



Religion and Economics in the Old Testament 

The relation of religion to economics was nat- 
ural among the old races and nations. Among 
the Jews religion and politics were identical and 
formed the theocratic government. The orig- 
inal idea of justice among the Hebrews came from 
their desert life and their nomadic organizations. 
This was an idea of brotherhood natural and easy 
in the patriarchal unit of a pastoral group. The 
social struggle that goes on through the Old Tes- 
tament is the inevitable conflict of nomads with 
the people in the cities. The conflict of Jehovah 
and Baal was a conflict between the freeman and 
the slave. That is to say, it was an economical 
conflict. 

Old Testament ** righteousness" was largely 
what we call ^^ social justice." Land monopoly, 
usury, low wages, cheating of widows — these were 

* Compare Thorold Kogers, " Economic Interpretation of His- 
tory," Chapter IV. 



THE INFLUENCE OF EELIGION 241 

branded by the prophets. This Old Testament 
righteousness was the law Jesns said must be 
fulfilled — every jot and tittle of it. The return 
of land, the cancellation of debt, and freeing cap- 
tives in the jubilee year, was a piece of oriental 
communism; it found no sympathy in the Roman 
law of ownership, although it constantly asserted 
itself inside the Romanized Christian Church. 

Eakly Cheistian Influence 

Among Christians there should be no question 
about the economic influence of the Church. The 
Church was meant to be an economic establish- 
ment and if it has not fulfilled that idea it has 
never been without living testimony to it. Not 
only was the first Church communistic — the shar- 
ing of worldly possessions — but the Jewish pic- 
ture of a righteous community which exhibited 
economic justice went over into Christianity with 
a profounder personal pity and sympathy for 
misery and with the Cross as a symbol. 

**The communism attempted in the apostolic Church 
was continued in the traditions of the early and 
medieval Church, as the ideal form of Christian society. 
The Christian fathers of the first three or four centuries 
were full of the new social ideals. ' ' * 

Until the eleventh century the early com- 
munistic conception of the Church was regarded 

* Sidgwick's " History of Ethics," quoted by Conrad Noel, iQ 
"Socialism anu Church History," p. 103. 



242 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

as its social ideal. The catalogue of the fathers 
who supported such a conception is long. Basil, 
Clement, Ambrose, Isidore, Zeno, Chrysostom, 
Tertullian. Nor did it fade away under the better 
industrial circumstances of the Renaissance. 
There was a strong socializing tendency in the 
Church, even just before the Reformation. 

Modern political economy found, perhaps, its 
earliest exponents in medieval canonists, — eccle- 
siastics who had given themselves to the study of 
law. The economic doctrines which they put out 
and which were accepted by the times were 
* * Christian ^ ' in the sense that they were especially 
considerate of the weak. 

Profits and wages, for instance, were not to be 
higher than permitted the recipient to live accord- 
ing to the requirements of his position — ^his status. 
Although there were class differences, which would 
seem to give permanence to inequalities, yet, on 
the whole, this adjudication of the canonists made 
for temporary standards of acquisition. 

Economic Value of Monasticism 

The early monastic systems were largely instru- 
mental in the spread of economic efficiency. They 
not only were communistic groups which had the 
advantage of organization in production, but they 
became the centers for the teaching of agricul- 
ture and simpler industries to the population 
around them. Economic values so surely attended 



« 



THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGION 243 

monastic organization, where properly managed, 
that the monks as a society were unable to fulfill 
their vows of poverty; their co-operation, thrift, 
and knowledge made them rich. Here was a direct 
economic power exerted by the Church. 

This power was again shown when the monastic 
orders became missionary forces. They became 
the agricultural colleges and trade schools of 
northern Europe. Our own modern missionary 
program has done the same thing; our mission- 
aries have taught innumerable economic meth- 
ods to the peoples to whom they were sent. In 
the history of Christian missions, it is easy to 
note how the conception of the gospel as a plan 
of soul salvation, depending upon belief, creed, 
and baptism, gave place to a conception of mis- 
sionary activity which was educational not only 
in agriculture and craftsmanship, but in litera- 
ture and social institutions. 

"When I was in the East there was a good deal 
being said about trade following the flag. I found, 
as a matter of fact, that trade did not follow the 
flag, but trade followed the missionary. The mis- 
sionaries went into Burma and found that the 
Burmese people had rheumatism from sleeping on 
the ground, or that they were troubled by the bite 
of insects. The missionaries sent for Perry 
Davis's Pain Killer; from the State of Rhode 
Island there were great shipments of this lini- 
ment. The missionaries found the Indian women 
painfully at their hand looms making the cloth 



244 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

out of which their garments were fashioned, and 
they immediately imported calico and Singer sew- 
ing machines, which freed their labor for other 
perhaps higher things. Article after article, eco- 
nomic method after economic method, can be 
directly traced to missionaries who went to less 
civilized people and who wished to give them the 
economic fruits of civilization. 

In the middle ages the Franciscan order was 
born out of economic conditions. St. Francis of 
Assisi, horrified by the disparity between the rich 
and the poor, organized a brotherhood whose 
primal vow was poverty, in order to make his 
great personal protest against the economic con- 
ditions of the time. In fact, it was the antago- 
nism of this order to the wealthy classes that made 
it difficult for the papal authorities for a long 
time to give countenance to the Franciscans. 

What Is the Chubch Doing Today? 

The Church is the modern institution that has 
tried to correct the largest number of social mal- 
adjustments. It has supplemented our elemen- 
tary public school education, which is all that nine- 
tenths of our people receive, by mercantile, tech- 
nical, and industrial education in Y. M. C. A. and 
parish trade schools. It has tried to make up for 
the poverty of tenement house life by building 
parish houses in which social and recreational 
opportunities on a large scale have been offered 



THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGION 245 

the children of the slums. It has organized the 
Y. M. C. A. — a great fraternity of young men, 
with social advantages. It has supplied gym- 
nasiums and athletic clubs to mitigate destructive 
physical environment of the poor. It has brought 
the tenement child and its poor mother to the coun- 
try and to the seashore, placing them in ample 
houses. It has supplied, in day-nurseries, medi- 
cal attendance and nursing for the care of babies 
and small children, whose mothers are forced to 
work. It has supplied sewing and other means 
of income for old women who are past the ages of 
successful business competition and yet love their 
**own home.'* It has provided schemes of co- 
operative buying — a large saving to wage-earners. 
It is now supplying in its forums a platform for 
studying the labor question — a meeting-place for 
ideas and classes. It has built the best hospitals, 
the best homes for orphans and for the aged. In 
short, the Church has tried — unfortunately, in a 
broken and unco-ordinated fashion, because it is 
not itself a unity — to supply the social deficien- 
cies of our modem state. It has had a vision of 
living unity in spite of its theological schism and 
denominational discord. Indeed, the remarkable 
thing to observe is that the most broken side of 
the Church, Protestantism, has displayed in the 
last century in England and America more sense 
of social solidarity than the Catholic Church, 
which in the middle ages stood for socialization. 



246 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

' * Many members of the Church of England are Social- 
ists, and would establish a commonwealth whose people 
should own the land and the industrial capital and 
administer them co-operatively for the good of all. Such 
public ownership they regard as urgent, and as a neces- 
sary deduction from the teachings of the Church. They 
are not communists but socialists. Far from seeking the 
abolition of private property or the curtailment of per- 
sonal freedom, they desire such an industrial rearrange- 
ment of society as shall not only increase the national 
output but shall secure to the majority the wealth they 
produce and the liberty they have hitherto been denied. 

'^The Christian faith cannot be summed up in the 
word socialism, nor should it be finally identified with 
any political or economic system. For all this, church- 
men are convinced that the principles which underlie 
socialism are, so far as they go, the principles of the 
Christian religion as applied to political, commercial, 
and industrial problems. ' ' * 

In America the Federal Council of Churches, 
an organization of a number of Protestant 
churches, was formed for the purpose of advo- 
cating economic programs for the people ^s advan- 
tage. In New York the Federation of Churches 
has a similar but more limited object. Certain 
churches see the danger of alliance with the con- 
servative and exploiting classes and are making 
efforts to be of specific assistance in abolishing 
poverty and misery and in securing the economic 
independence of the working-classes. 

* Conrad Noel, " Socialism and Church History," p. 7. 



« 



THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGION 247 

The Salvation Army is an economic force 
transforming down-and-onters into productive 
citizens, with all kinds of economic machinery in 
the city and in the country. 

There is today a new social efficiency coming 
into the Protestant churches of the West. Mr. 
Robert Bruere has made a survey of Protestant 
church conditions in rural communities, particu- 
larly in Virginia and in the Middle West. The 
future of the country church, he declares, de- 
pends upon its dealing with economic and social 
questions which affect the people. The response 
made in Virginia and Iowa to this new attitude 
is surprising. Churches that had been dead came 
to life and exerted a powerful influence in the 
community by taking up economic questions of 
interest to the community. 

There is a picture of a church in the World's 
Work, December, 1913, underneath which is writ- 
ten: ^'Church Facilities as a Farmer's Invest- 
ment. '* The proprietors of Ravenswood Farm, 
in their efforts to solve the labor problem in cen- 
tral Missouri, helped build this church and they 
have got their money back in efficient service. So 
there is an effort in the West to use the church as 
an economic power and it is found to possess eco- 
nomic power. 

Then, for the East, a book by Gill and Pinchot 
has been recently published, giving a survey of 
the condition of country churches in New Eng- 
land. 



248 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

**A country community in Vermont had been with- 
out a church for more than twenty years. When Mr. 
Gill came to it, the moral and social laxity of the whole 
community was flagrant. Disbelief in the existence of 
goodness appeared to be common, public disapproval of 
indecency was timid or lacking, and religion was in gen- 
eral disrepute. Not only was there no day of worship, 
but also no day of rest. Life was mean, hard, small, 
selfish. Land belonging to the town was openly pillaged 
by the public officers who held it in trust; real estate 
values were low and among the respectable families there 
was a general desire to sell their property and move 
away. 

^'Then the Church was organized. The change which 
followed was swift, striking, thorough, and enduring. 
The public property of the town, once a source of graft 
and demoralization, became a public asset; the value of 
real estate increased beyond all proportion to the gen- 
eral rise of land values elsewhere. In the decade which 
has elapsed since the Church began to work, boys and 
girls of a new type have been brought up ; the reputa- 
tion of the village has been changed from bad to good. ' * 

When religion is seen to be a biological product 
resulting from human need, its economic influ- 
ence does not require defense. Religion met 
human need, otherwise it would have perished. 
As the most fundamental need of man was food 
and a return for his labor, his religion never 
could have militated against those results. Re- 
Hgion today is of many kinds; to criticize an 
early form of religion from a later industrial 
level is useless. Mr. Billy Sunday does a great 



THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGION 249 

deal of good; he makes happier homes and 
quieter working-people, but his theology is ar- 
chaic. Yet even he has economic effect. A mine 
owner in Pennsylvania found in his expense 
account that his mules were costing him only a 
half of what they had been costing. Upon in- 
quiry, as he told a friend of mine, he found the 
mule drivers had been so affected by Mr. Sun- 
day's Scranton revival that they had given up 
swearing and beating their animals, drinking 
and destroying harnesses. 

We are about to get a fresh hold on religion, 
which has been waiting several centuries for a 
new psychology. The new religion will be both 
a tonic to human nature and a renovation of eco- 
nomic practice. 

The Hebrew tradition and the Roman run 
through the Christian Church ; the first puts more 
emphasis on life and usefulness; the other on 
death and punishment. When the Papacy devel- 
oped a hierarchical state, the Roman govern- 
mental system, which it largely inherited, natur- 
ally smothered communistic Hebrew elements. 
These reasserted themselves sporadically. An 
economic rebellion attended a theological re- 
bellion. This was true under Hus, Wyclif, and 
Luther. 

We must always remember the difference be- 
tween religion and the Church. The religious cur- 
rents of an age often run clearest outside the 
Church. The brightest vision is often seen by the 



250 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

solitary man who is unrecognized by organized 
and established churches. It is upon this class 
of prophets, messiahs, philosophers, reformers, 
revolutionists, the precious commission has been 
bestowed of richly contributing to the eternal 
renewal and growth of the human spirit. 

The Roman Church succeeded to much of the 
power and organization of the Roman Empire; 
its imperialistic ideas, naturally, are the essence 
of conservatism. But in every state, the Church, 
where it is an establishment, is conservative. 
Even when the Church is supported by a volun- 
tary system, it is maintained for the most part, 
by moneyed classes and consequently is conserva- 
tive when economic ideas are involved. The 
Church's social sympathy is individual rather than 
corporate; its social idealism is sentimental and 
not essential. The solitaries or little groups who 
advocated progress have often been sacrificed; a 
transformation of conditions that would relieve 
the distress of misery has never been undertaken. 
Today the great churches of the world stand 
ready to block a popular revolution, if such should 
be the outcome of the war, just as they did after 
Waterloo when the Pope, the arch-conservative, 
was made the repository of the peace of Europe 
and reaction ^^put on the lid.'' 

Of course ^*the Church" could not prevent the 
war, or stop it. The Church, regarded as a con- 
servative institution, was a part of the war his- 
torically and economically. The German feudal- 



THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGION 251 

ism still must thank Luther for some of its stub- 
born strength transferred to it from the Papacy; 
plutocracy must thank Calvin for a destruction 
of budding social motives ; while economically the 
principles of the Church are the same as those 
which have embroiled the nation. Her outcries 
have been local; her interference political. She 
has had no vision superior to that of the com- 
batants ; no high outlook above the battle. To put 
it crudely, the Church has adopted the reigning 
economies and is merely a rubber stamp to com- 
mercialism. It sees with the eyes of bankers, 
statesmen, diplomats, and manufacturers. It is 
not ahead of them pointing out a better way, but 
is behind them depending upon their defense to 
preserve its property and its influence. 

Eeligious people, being largely unacquainted 
with the history of economics, are generally not 
aware of the serious injustice they practice against 
the classes they employ. They regard economic 
conditions as inexorable, divinely ordained, part 
of the natural order, and they make their conduct 
conform to an absolute and personal rather than 
to a changing and social ideal. Charity and a good 
conscience are the ends of their religious effort. 
In the old days slaveholders had good consciences 
and were benevolent. Today employers, whose 
hands are stained with the blood of Homestead, 
Pullman, Ludlow, Cabin Creek, have apparently 
good consciences and are most charitable. 

The moment economics are discovered to be 



252 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

plastic and the so-called laws of economics merely 
a relation of personal humaneness, depending 
upon social ideas that are held at different times, 
then religion becomes obedient to a social law; 
then charity becomes an insult; a good conscience 
hypocrisy. 

Religion today can be a distinct help to the 
working-classes. We are living in a time when 
two comparatively new sciences, psychology and 
sociology, are recreating the foundations of re- 
ligious thought. If these lead us to accept as 
a definition of religion — that it is the impulse 
to eternal growth — then there is no limit to 
the service that religion can perform for the 
humbler classes of society. Religion will urge 
their eternal value and will console them with 
ardent encouragement for an eternal career. It 
will preach the formation of a society where 
growth is more generally possible than in our own 
and it will urge upon the strong the duty and 
privilege of assisting the freest and fullest devel- 
opment of the weak. 

Religion too will direct the paths of emotion 
which are so largely the paths of action and as a 
preface for all this will accustom the men of power 
today to the idea of a new world-order in which 
the worker is not held down but lifted up ; is not 
silenced but listened to; is not insulted but hon- 
ored. 

Religion must affect industrial life, otherwise 
the culmination of material prosperity is the sig- 



THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGION 253 

nal for decadence by misuse of wealth at the hands 
of pleasure-loving heirs of great property. Only 
by altruistic and social motives entering and pos- 
sessing a civilization, at the moment of its danger- 
ous instability, will it endure. 

The Great War has exploded for our generation 
the idea that religion can be something apart from 
the whole organization of life. 



XII 

LABOR ORGANIZATION AND ITS 
INFLUENCE ON OUR PROBLEMS 



"The problem is to place the laborer in a position to collect 
due return for his labor." 

" The cure of poverty is prevention." 

Life of Joseph Fels, by Maey Fels. 

" In the degree in which men have an active concern in the ends 
that control their activity, their activity becomes free or voluntary 
and loses its externally enforced and servile quality, even though 
the physical aspect of behavior remain the same. What is termed 
politics, democratic social organization makes provision for this 
direct participation in control; in the economic region, control 
remains external and autocratic. . . . An education which 
should unify the disposition of the members of society would do 
much to unify society itself." 

John Dewey, 
Democracy and Education, p. 305. 

"The Trade Union Acts of 1872 and 1875 averted a revolu- 
tion." (These Acts gave legal status in the United Kingdom to 
trade-unions. ) 

John Morley's Recollections, Vol. I, p. 143. 



CHAPTER XII 

LABOR ORGANIZATION AND ITS INFLU- 
ENCE ON OUR PROBLEMS 

WHILE American business has in general 
refused sympathetic attention to trade- 
unionism and takes even today a hostile attitude 
to labor organizations, the leading countries of 
Europe — England, France, and Germany — even 
before the war co-operated notably with labor. 
This may seem all the more remarkable to us be- 
cause in Germany labor was so largely socialistic, 
in France syndicalistic, while the British labor 
unions were admitted into the Socialist Con- 
gresses on the Continent and given a vote. 
Although this co-operation was different in dif- 
ferent countries, it produced more industrial 
peace and more industrial efficiency than that en- 
joyed by America. 

Now in the midst of war ** labor" in these Euro- 
pean countries is advancing to still further power. 
I have even heard rumors of an industrial rather 
than a political democracy as desired in Germany, 
and a labor rather than a ^ liberal party'' govern- 
ment as possible in England. 

Before America has taken the first sympathetic 
step towards labor, her most dangerous com- 

257 



258 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

petitors in trade may have gone almost the whole 
distance. 

Organized labor in America has many good 
points. The Rev. Charles Stelzle, himself once a 
mechanic, now a trusted adviser of conservative 
as well as labor interests, writes in the Miner's 
Journal for August, 1917 : 

' ' Labor halls have come to be important social centers. 
Here helpful lecture courses on moral and economic 
subjects are frequently given. The labor press has its 
educative value. Many of the labor journals, especially 
those published by the International, give courses in tech- 
nical training. 

^'A genuine moral uplift comes through the regular 
meetings of the union, because a man must present his 
facts in a definite, convincing form if he hopes to win 
over his associates to his beliefs. Every man has a fair 
chance to preach these views, no matter how unpopular 
they may be. 

' ' Nowhere does one get a more patient hearing than at 
a labor union meeting. Here, too, he learns the lesson 
of subordination to the wills of others. He learns the 
value of 'team work' — of co-operation. 

"In the labor movement the working-man learns the 
lesson of thrift. Rarely does a trade-unionist apply to 
organized charity or any other form of charity for 
relief. It is easily possible to talk about the value of 
the trade-union as a force for temperance. One can 
easily make a strong argument in this direction. The 
question of the education and the Americanizing of the 
immigrant must be discussed in favor of the trade- 
union. 



LABOR ORGANIZATION 259 

' ' Child-labor, the sweat shop, unsanitary conditions in 
shop and home, are all questions concerning which trade- 
unionism need not be ashamed to speak. ' ' 

In England * * the principle of the recognition of 
trade-unions by the state has been conceded dur- 
ing the war. ' ' ^ * Trade-unionism has much to con- 
tribute to the working out of reconstruction and 
its contribution could best be made through some 
form of national labor council, representatives of 
the whole trade-union movement and responsible 
for expressing to the government the considered 
policy of the movement, and for negotiating with 
it concerning trade-unions and labor questions. '' * 

A vice-president of the National City Bank has 
expressed the opinion that the war will weaken 
trade-unionism and that it will be easier to deal 
with working-men as individuals after the war, — 
that there will be less collective bargaining. This 
is a dangerous hope for our financiers to indulge 
in — for they will naturally be inclined to hasten 
or assist what in their opinion the times presage, 
and obey Nietzsche ^s maxim, *4f you see a thing 
falling, push if; but they will discover that they 
are attempting to overthrow the strongest thing 
in the world — organized labor — and that their 
assault only increases its strength. 

Worse still, such an attitude towards labor of 
aggressive ill-will fails to take note of what the 
war has brought about in England, whence we 

* Monthly Review, U. S. Labor Statistics, August, 1917. 



260 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

derive on the whole our labor legislation and pro- 
gram. Our labor condition in the United States 
was the same before the war as the English con- 
dition. ^^In pre-war days,'* says G. H. Roberts, 
M.P., *^ employers and employees were rapidly 
drifting into a state of mutual suspicion and ill- 
concealed antagonism.'' Dr. Arthur Shadwell, 
from whose article in the Nineteenth Century for 
July, 1917, the quotation is taken, believes that 
England has lost its opportunity of peaceful ad- 
justment by its failure to punish private profiteer- 
ing during the war while it exacted a full measure 
of patriotic sacrifice from labor. The situation 
in England is tense. Dr. Shadwell says, **The 
country is on the edge of an industrial volcano." 
But the British Government is taking steps to 
conciliate labor and to strengthen it. A report 
was issued in July by a sub-committee of the 
reconstruction committees for the permanent 
improvement of relations between employers and 
workmen. One important undertaking will be the 
restoration of trade-union rules and customs sus- 
pended by the war. *^ National industrial coun- 
cils are advocated in order to secure co-operation 
by granting to working-men and women a greater 
share in the consideration of matters affecting 
their industry." England is on the edge of an 
industrial revolution; her government is making 
arrangement for greater co-operation between 
employers and employees and the encouragement 
of trade-unionism, while American financiers^ 



LABOR ORGANIZATION 261 

when their country is in precisely the same situ- 
ation of intense labor unrest, are counting upon 
the break-up of labor organizations. Do they for- 
get that just before the United States entered the 
war, in the first months of 1917, organized labor 
roundly declared it would not obey laws that 
might be passed to prevent strikes, affirming that 
they would rather be called law-breakers than 
to become slaves? In America before the war 
labor was threatening and capital was losing 
patience. In August, 1917, John Mitchell's de- 
scription of the attitude of American labor dupli- 
cates the English situation: 

**It must be remembered that the workers have been 
hearing about the tremendous earnings of some of the 
large corporations. The cost of living for the workman 
has increased, however, and so this great prosperity rep- 
resents adversity for him. His wages have been in- 
creased, but his purchasing power is actually less than 
before the war. So they feel, and justly, I believe, that 
they should be given some share of this prosperity. ' ' * 

Why should not like causes provoke like re- 
sults 1 Why should America not face an industrial 
revolution if it persists in measures and attitudes 
which in England caused a serious writer in an 
important review to say, ^^The country is on the 
edge of an industrial volcano"? 

There are indeed more reasons for industrial 
disturbances in America. We have similar labor 

* New York Evening Post, August 8, 1917. 



262 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

conditions, but we have exasperated them. Eng- 
land has encouraged unionism. Our greatest 
corporations are the foes of organized labor. 
Oil, steel, copper, all have fought labor fiercely. 
Our great traction companies are also the foes 
of trade-unionism. We in the United States have 
as combustible material collected for an industrial 
revolution as they have in England; in addition, 
upon our bonfire we have poured petroleum. 

America at war may acquire industrial meth- 
ods which will leave their mark on business, — 
socialized methods more like those of England, or 
France, or Germany. Professor Kuno Francke, 
of Harvard University, believes that *' there will 
assert itself in all the countries affected by the 
war a strong influence of the German principle 
of the responsibility of the state for the physical, 
moral, and intellectual effectiveness of all its 
members. And the result will be an era of social 
and educational reform throughout the world." 
To do this our intense individualism will have to 
be modified ; existing feuds between employer and 
employee will have to cease; the prosecution and 
the ^^frame up'^ of labor leaders will have to be 
discarded and mutual distrust overcome. Em- 
ployers, judges, political parties, will have to treat 
the labor question more sympathetically and 
intelligently. 

Labor in America aspires to what Europe has 
given and is likely to enlarge — an influential 
voice in industry and government. In war time 



LABOR ORGANIZATION 263 

the state asks all of us what we can, do to help. 
In peace time a labor government would see to it 
that all of us actually and intelligently did help 
the state. 



Theee Labor Propagandas 

Looking toward labor control of government, 
there are in the United States three distinct 
propagandas. Socialism works through political 
methods but looks forward ultimately to a labor 
government in place of a political government. 
Industrial unionism, as represented by the In- 
dustrial Workers of the World — the I. W. W.'s — 
believes in direct action rather than political 
methods to gain its ends — in strikes rather than in 
legislation. But it also looks forward to a labor 
government. 

The New Machine is an incipient movement to 
form a government by the mobilizing of arts and 
science, that is by the harmonious co-operation 
of the scientific, art, industrial, and business 
forces of the country. The real rulers will rule, 
not a faineant political party. Here again actual 
productive power is substituted in government 
for political power. 

*'The American Commonwealth (says Charles Fer- 
guson) can be made powerful and prosperous by 
substituting for the existing partisan or bipartisan 
'Machine' in local communities a political institution 



264 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

devoted to really practical politics, namely, to an econ- 
omy of the resources of nature and the creative abilities 
of men, with a view to increasing the purchasing-power 
of everybody 's day 's work. ' ' * 



The labor movement in America in its extreme 
expression can best be studied in the I. W. W., 
feared for its fearlessness by the conservative; 
applauded for its efficiency by the radical. 

The I. W. W. has received a great many hard 
knocks from the press as well as from police- 
men's clubs, not only for what it has done, but 
on account of the mystery which surrounds its 
organization and methods. More power has been 
imputed to them than they possess; more an- 
archistic violence than they plan; more deviltry 
than they are capable of. 

Glimpses behind the scenes are welcome that 
reveal the I. W. W. in undress, in its every-day 
organization and methods. 

The court proceedings in Seattle, attending the 
trial of Thomas Tracy, have opened the I. W. W. 
to the light of common day. 

**The vague, incoherent specter of an unmen- 
tionable organization, which has haunted the 
minds of the average citizens at the words 
I. W. W., received a local habitation and a name, 
and was seen to consist of local unions, secre- 
taries, committees, and other commonplace ele- 
ments. '' 

*New York Evening Post, March 27, 1917. 



LABOR ORGANIZATION 265 

History of the I. W. W. 

A description of this organization from the 
mouth of one of its founders may help us to see 
the limitations and weakness of this — the fighting 
labor organization. I shall proceed, therefore, 
for a few paragraphs to use the language of Mr. 
Thomas Flynn, the father of Elizabeth Gurley 
Flynn, who was for some time the New York or- 
ganizer of the I. W. W. and who was interested 
enough in my study of the organization to give 
me this story of the movement: 

''The I. W. W. was an outgrowth of the Social 
Trade and Labor Alliance and of the Socialist Labor 
Party. In 1904 American Socialists, troubled about 
method, issued a call for a convention at Chicago. The 
I. W. W., it has been said, was launched by the 
Western Federation of Miners as a buffer. They 
did actually participate, but the Socialist Party 
fought shy. 

'*De Leon, however, saw in the convention a way to 
get back into the Socialist Party. Representing at Chi- 
cago the old remnant of the Social Trade and Labor 
Alliance, he was easily the dominating figure of the con- 
vention. He was what I would call a fifteenth-century 
mind. If embittered against any one he was not merely 
vehement but venomous. 

"The Chicago Convention was held in 1905. Bill 
Haywood was in the chair. Father Hagerty, a Roman 
Catholic priest, drew up the preamble of the I. W. W. 
convention. The stand taken was calculated to put 
over Socialism and to do it in opposition to the old 



266 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

trade-unions. The I. W. W. as an industrial organiza- 
tion was planned that it might grow up within capital- 
ism and finally replace capitalism after the latter 's 
overthrow. 

*'De Leon, acting at this time in good faith, had his 
way in the convention. The I. W. W. movement pub- 
lished a paper, but De Leon with his paper. The Peo- 
ple, was the real spokesman. Socialists as a whole op- 
posed the movement and blamed Debs, whom they con- 
sidered an able but mistaken man. They believed that 
the I. W. W. was nothing but the Social Trade and 
Labor Alliance launched again. 

''However, there were one hundred thousand dues- 
paying members at the very least; in other words, the 
movement was at its height. 

'*A second convention was iield in 1906. The dis- 
agreement came here to a head. Debs did not attend 
this convention nor had afterward anything to do with 
the I. W. W. 

''After the convention De Leon was hailed as the 
savior of the organization, when actually by eliminating 
Sherman and the Western Federation of Miners he had 
split it in two — all for the sake of getting rid of one 
man. 

"In 1907 the convention was under the control of De 
Leon, who juggled its politics at his will. 

"The 1908 convention was a fight against De Leon- 
ism, which resulted in De Leon and his following being 
thrown out. De Leon was expelled upon a technicality 
— that being in the printing trade he had no business 
to present his credentials as one of the store and office 
workers. 

"You sometimes hear of De Leonism. By that is 
meant De Leon's desire for political action in the set- 



LABOR ORGANIZATION 267 

tlement of disputes as a 'civilized' method. He pre- 
ferred the ballot and peaceful agitation. 

"The 1908 convention dropped the political clause 
and became a straight-out labor organization. De Leon 
immediately called it an anarchist group and went fur- 
ther in his denunciations than any capitalist. He 
formed another I, W. W. in Michigan, which has what 
is practically an imaginary existence in Detroit, the 
main organization remaining in Chicago with Traut- 
man as its chief organizer. 

"In 1909, though there was no convention, a begin- 
ning was made at doing things as a labor organization. 
Previous to 1909 there had been no big strikes except 
one in Schenectady which after two or three days* dura- 
tion was a failure. 

"At this time Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was in Mis- 
soula, Montana. At the army post in this town it hap- 
pened that many of the soldiers had been reading a 
book by Herve, entitled 'Anti-Patriotism,' an argu- 
ment against militarism. This aroused discussion which 
finally culminated in a riot incited by an itinerant 
I. W. W. speaker, who was arrested. Elizabeth Gurley 
Flynn, not having been one of the speakers, was not 
arrested and was the only one of the local organization 
left free. She telegraphed all the available I. W. W. 
traveling speakers, who arrived in almost every train, 
held street meetings, and were arrested one and all. 
The jail was filled and an annex, a schoolhouse ap- 
propriated for the purpose, was also filled. The pris- 
oners claimed the food was not good enough or in large 
enough quantities. The authorities saw they had too 
much of a problem, especially in regard to expense, on 
their hands and opened the jail. Immediately, mass 
meetings were held in the principal streets and many 



268 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

converts to the I. W. W. movement were made. After 
the meeting the prisoners tried to get back into the jail 
but found they had been locked out. 

* ' They thought they could do this same trick in every 
city. They tried it in Spokane but were beaten, starved, 
and put in sweat boxes. But in spite of this they per- 
sisted and the city was finally made to recognize the 
right of free speech. 

**In 1910 occurred the McKees Rocks Strike, which 
was run by the I. W. W. and marked the beginning of 
sabotage. The State constabulary was called in to set- 
tle the strike. They clubbed and shot one of the 
strikers. The strikers in turn killed one of the State 
constabulary men and declared they would kill one 
for every striker that was shot. The strikers won. In 
1911 occurred the Lawrence Strike and later the 
Pater son Strike. Meanwhile from 1908 on strikes and 
free street fights did nothing to organize the working- 
class. 

**In 1912 I became the New York organizer. I felt 
there was too much of the 'bum element'; and that 
there were no actual organized bodies of working-men. 
I did not believe in street meetings but rather in meet- 
ing with the working-men in their halls. 

* ' The convention in 1913 was the occasion of the fight 
between *centralizers' and 'decentralizers' about or- 
ganization. The organization not only made it possible 
for a little coterie at headquarters to dominate the en- 
tire movement, but also great injustice was done by a 
flat rather than a proportional method of representa- 
tion. The decentralizers, however, were so divided — 
some of them favoring no organization at all — that the 
convention endorsed the old centralized methods. 

**At the report of this action of the convention the 



LABOR ORGANIZATION 269 

locals in New York melted away like snow. As a re- 
sult the general executive board, that is to say, the 
centralizers, won. The principal locals had been the 
piano workers in the Bronx, and the silk- workers. 
Since the convention in 1913 there has been very little 
to the I. W. W. movement — the piano workers, for in- 
stance, becoming an independent union. 

' ' Considerable work has been done in the West, where 
the situation is altogether different from the East, es- 
pecially among migratory workers, such as harvest 
workers. In the East, outside of Paterson and perhaps 
Philadelphia, there is no real organization. In 1905 
there were one hundred thousand dues-paying members. 
In 1913 at the convention the total number of votes 
was only 2,200, showing how the organization had run 
down. 

''Many I. W. W.'s represent a state of mind and not 
a formal adherence to the organization or to the con- 
stitution. For instance, in the winter of 1913-14, 
Frank Tannenbaum, who wanted to organize the unem- 
ployed and who came to Haywood and secured his ap- 
proval, was not a formal I. W. W." 

The Futility of Teade-Unionism 

The I. W. W. have seen the futility of trade or- 
ganization or craft organization. Trade-union- 
ism has developed an aristocracy of labor, — 
each craft looks out for itself and is as capital- 
istic as the employers. Each union will make 
separate contracts and will sell its labor as read- 
ily as a shoe manufacturer sells shoes. Em- 
ployers are able to take advantage of these sepa- 



270 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

rate organizations to make separate contracts 
with them which terminate at different dates. 
The result of this is, generally, that some of these 
craftsmen can be kept at work in time of strikes 
and the works can be kept open. This fact be- 
comes a basis for an appeal by the employer for 
individual workmen, that is to say, non-union men, 
to take the place of the strikers. It also provides 
a basis for the public claim that his place is going 
on as usual, which has a very important effect 
upon the newspaper-reading public. ^^A manager 
of a railroad who can keep control of fifteen 
per cent, of the old men can allow eighty-five per 
cent, to go out on strike and defeat them every 
time.^* * 

There are two types of unions, — the craft 
union, which is organized according to the tools 
used, and the industrial union, which includes the 
whole industry. This latter is the I. W. W. type. 
The I. W. W. believe in the organization of an in- 
dustry from top to bottom. They take into this 
organization both men and women and give them 
equal voting power. They not only take in men 
and women, but boys and girls, if they are em- 
ployed in an industry. That is to say, the or- 
ganization of the I. W. W., in what may be called 
its political form, parallels its industrial form. 
Such an organization is a keen criticism of mod- 
ern democracy, which demands child-labor and fe- 
male labor for the creation of wealth and yet will 

*Andr§ Tridon, "The New Unionism," p. 8. 



LABOR ORGANIZATION 271 

not give to these persons — necessary for its in- 
dustrial existence — a political status. 

William Haywood says that thirty-five million 
workers in the United States cannot join the 
American Federation of Labor. In other words, 
he considers organized government by the union 
workers is as harsh and exclusive as organized 
government by the capitalists. 

The futility of trade-unions is revealed by 
conditions which diminish the importance of skilled 
labor. Specialization in industry has become so 
particularized as to provide a different job for 
almost every different mechanical motion required 
in production. As a result an individual of any 
intelligence in most shops and mills can acquire 
his ** trade ^' in a very short time. 

The general cause for the failure of trade- 
unions is declared by Mr. Andre Tridon — the 
author of **The New Unionism" — to be the in- 
judicious use of power. 

'* Trade-unions are efficient as centers of resistance 
against the encroachments of capital. They fail to a 
certain extent, however, from an injudicious use of their 
power. They fail generally because they confine them- 
selves to a guerrilla war against the effects of the exist- 
ing system instead of trying to change it in its entirety, 
instead of using their organized forces as a lever for 
the final emancipation of the working-class, that is to 
Bay, the ultimate abolition of the wage system. ' ' * 

* Tridon, "The New Unionism," p. 11. 



272 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

Syndicalism 

The word * ^Syndic'' has been in common use 
in France in connection with labor associations 
for two generations. The nearest equivalent 
for ** Trade-Unions'' in French is '^Syndicats 
ouvriers'' (* ^Working-men Syndicates''). How- 
ever, the word ** Syndicalism" is of more recent 
origin and has a special meaning. It denotes 
the policy of the ** Confederation Generale du 
Travail," the object of which is the destruction 
by force of the existing organization and the 
transfer of industrial capital from its present 
possessors to Syndicalists, or in other words to 
the revolutionary Trade-Unions. The means by 
which this object is to be secured is the *^ Gen- 
eral Strike." 

*' French Trade Unions are divided into two classes. 
In the one are those unions which propose to gain their 
ends by revolutionary means, and are known as ' Syndi- 
cats rouges'; in the other are those whose efforts to im- 
prove their position are restricted within constitutional 
limits, and are called 'Syndicats jaunes.' "* 

Sjoidicalism bases its revolutionary program 
not only upon economic but upon social condi- 
tions. M. Sorel declares that the bourgeoisie, 
which ought to be the pioneer of progress, *^has 
lost all virility, and its present attitude is a mix- 
ture of whimpering egoism in dread of spolia- 

* Sir Arthur Clay, " Syndicalism and Labour," p. 2. 



LABOR ORGANIZATION 273 

tion, and of feeble-minded humanitarianism. The 
world cannot look for help from this source. 
The lamentations of a lachrymose bourgeoisie 
will not avail to save it." * 

This same finding is a part of the extreme in- 
dustrial radicalism in England and in America. 
It asserts that the middle class, which has been 
the backbone of these nations, is being dissolved, 
part ascending to millionairedom and part being 
cast into the ranks of the proletariat. 

Syndicalism proposes to make the middle class 
wake up and fight for its life and so to give new 
vital direction to civilization. 

The syndicalist may so firmly believe in this 
purpose of his doctrine as to attain a feeling 
closely akin to religious fervor. For instance, M. 
Sorel not only asserts a close analogy between 
syndicalism and religion but goes on to the con- 
clusion that it is to be accepted as a religion. He 
finds warrant for this belief in Bergson's teach- 
ing that a revolutionary myth has as good a 
title as a religion to inspire the conscience of 
men. 

The I. W. W. are interesting because they rep- 
resent the militant side of American labor or- 
ganizations. They are American Syndicalists; 
they believe in the irreconciliable conflict between 
the classes; they repel all aid from outside their 
own numbers; they scorn reform or any com- 
promises; they despise even their fellow-work- 

* Sir Arthur Clay, " Syndicalism and Labour," p. 11. 



274 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

men who are members of trade-unions with their 
aristocratic and capitalistic tendencies. 

The Syndicalist is anti-militarist as against 
workmen but militarist as against employers. 
His prime object, however, is not destruction 
but the study of economic law and productive 
processes so that finally when by his warfare 
upon capital he takes possession himself indus- 
trially, he may be capable of carrying it on. 

The novelty of the principles and methods of 
labor organization can be judged by the fact that 
the word *^ Syndicalism" and the word ** Sabo- 
tage ' ' are not to be found either in the New Cen- 
tury Dictionary (1911) or the ^ * Encyclopaedia of 
Social Reform'^ (1908). 

Sabotage 

Sabotage is closely enough connected with 
Syndicalism and the I. W. W. to warrant a brief 
explanation. The essence of sabotage is injury 
done to the employer by his employees, while 
working for him. If labor is considered as a mer- 
chandise sold in the open market, which is the 
theory accepted by capital, there is no reason why 
workers should not attempt to raise their prices 
for this merchandise of labor when economic con- 
ditions either compel or permit them to do so. If, 
when this is attempted, employers prove unwill- 
ing, the worker, the I. W. W. claim, may then give 
inferior labor for inferior pay. This, then, is the 
theory of sabotage — poor work for poor pay. 



1 



LABOR ORGANIZATION 275 

Sabotage is a device practiced by workers in 
their railitant efforts to raise prices. They be- 
lieve themselves justified by capitalistic destruc- 
tion to raise prices or dividends. 

''Carloads of potatoes were destroyed in Illinois re- 
cently and cotton was burned in the Southern stores; 
coffee was destroyed by the Brazilian planters; barge 
loads of onions were dumped overboard in California, 
apples are left to rot on the trees of whole orchards in 
Washington; and hundreds of tons of foodstuffs are 
held in cold storage and rendered unfit for consump- 
tion."* 

''There are three kinds of sabotage: 

"1. Active sabotage, which consists in the damaging 
of goods or machinery. 

"2. Open-mouthed sabotage beneficial to the ultimate 
consumer and which consists in exposing or defeating 
fraudulent commercial practices. 

"3. Obstructionism or passive sabotage, which con- 
sists in carrying out orders literally, regardless of con- 
sequences, "f 

The ease with which sabotage can be practiced 
by an employee is seen from the following advice 
given to French syndicalists by Sebastien Faure 
and Ponget.J 

"To put boilers out of order use explosives or sili- 
cates or plain glass bottle which thrown on the glowing 
coals hinders combustion and clogs up the smoke ex- 
hausts. You can also use acids to corrode boiler tubes; 

* Tridon, " The New Unionism," p. 54. f p. 43. X P- 48. 



276 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

acid fumes will ruin cylinders and piston rods. A small 
quantity of some corrosive substance, a handful of 
emery will be the end of oil cups. When it comes to 
dynamos or transformers, short circuits and inversion 
of poles can be easily managed. Underground cables 
can be destroyed by fire, water, or explosives. ' ' 

Such advice discloses both the delicacy of the 
modern industrial organism as well as the high 
moral standards and loyalty to society at large 
upon which social stability depends. Without the 
co-operation of all classes, *^ peace'' in the future 
will be only a more hateful form of war. 

The Futility of the Ballot 

The I. W. W. do not believe in securing their 
rights by votes. They are not suspicious of the 
ballot but laugh at it. Out of the thirty-five mil- 
lions of workers in the United States, there are 
** approximately eighteen million people who can 
in no manner be directly interested in politics, to 
wit: 1,700,000 children wage-workers, 4,800,000 
women wage-workers, 3,500,000 foreign wage- 
workers, 5,000,000 negro wage-workers, 3,000,000 
floating and otherwise disfranchised wage- 
workers.'' 

Moreover, the proletariat is learning the lesson 
that ^ Apolitical power is merely the reflex of eco- 
nomic power and that political advantage can 
only be had through economic superiority. ' ' * 

♦Tridon, "The New Unionism," pp. 14, 15, 



LABOR ORGANIZATION 277 

The I. W. W. are not a political party nor do 
they want to be. That would be treachery to 
their every hope. Vandervelde holds that **the 
great truth contained in the theory of direct ac- 
tion is that one cannot obtain vital reforms 
through intermediaries, who are governed by 
public opinion.* This theory that the political 
representatives of labor succumb to public opin- 
ion and are finally disloyal to labor deserves 
attention. In other words, the I. W. W. exist 
to do what political parties cannot do. They 
would unite the workers in the places where they 
work in order that the fight with individual em- 
ployers can be made unitedly and the class spirit 
of the workers developed in united fashion. Fi- 
nally, — so runs the ideal program, — the workers 
will be able to seize the workshops and will oper- 
ate them for themselves. 

No ownership, except by the workers them- 
selves, is considered feasible by the I. W. W. They 
oppose Socialism, on the ground that it is a politi- 
cal party, and specifically a program of govern- 
ment ownership, that is to say, another form of 
indirect action. To be sure the Socialist Party 
holds that it is the workers who are going to 
vote themselves to control of the government; 
that is, the socialized government will run the 
industries. But this, to the I. W. W., would be 
merely a new variety of the slavery that already 

♦Tridon, "The New Unionism," p. 24. 



278 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

exists under private ownership. The pressure of 
public opinion is their bete noire. 

Emeegence op the I. W. W. to Clearer Public 

View 

At the trial of Thomas Tracy for the murder 
of Jefferson Beard, some very interesting evi- 
dence was introduced which brightens the face of 
the I. W. W. The murder took place when the 
I. W. W. excursion boat from Seattle, containing 
I. W. W. members, tried to land in Everett, 
Washington, to demonstrate in favor of free 
speech and their organization, which had been 
driven out of the town. I quote from the New 
York Evening Post, of March 27, 1917 : 

''An ordinance signed by the Mayor on September 21 
prohibited street-speaking in the business section. 

" 'Don't you know,' said Mr. Vanderveer, 'that the 
records of that ordinance show that it never was passed 
and never was even voted on ? ' 

" 'I haven't examined the records,' said the Mayor. 

' ' ' You signed them, didn 't you ? ' And this the Mayor 
admitted. Rushed through illegally, an ordinance 
which had never even been voted on was put into effect 
by the Mayor's signature, and because they were under 
suspicion of intending to violate this ordinance, 
I. W. W.'s were deported, with and without beatings. 

"That I. W. W. speakers were arrested repeatedly, 
thrown into jail, taken next day to the city limits, some- 
times beaten, and that this occurred repeatedly during 
August, September, and October, during which time no 



LABOR ORGANIZATION 279 

member of the organization resisted arrest or violated 
any city ordinance, or received a trial on the question 
of street-speaking, is clear from the State's own wit- 
nesses. ' ' 

The I. W. W. of all labor organizations have 
studied the history of strikes most carefully and 
are best acquainted with the tactics of labor war- 
fare. They believe that a trained fighting or- 
ganization, even if small, is better than a large, 
and what they consider timid, apathetic trades- 
union organization, successful only in collecting 
large dues. 

Militancy of the I. W. W. 

In America the death or the imprisonment of 
I. W. W. leaders, and the unsuccessful outcome of 
some of their strikes, has diverted, in the East, 
attention from them. The success, on the other 
hand, of the labor unions, under the leadership 
of Mr. Gompers, by entirely different ideas and 
methods, is so extraordinary that it may well be 
that Syndicalism in America lacks the economic 
importance it has had in France and Italy. 
At the same time it should be noticed that the 
A. F. of L. is not in sympathy with the extreme 
labor groups in Europe. A more socialistic labor 
party may be expected in America which would be 
a link between Europe *s radicals and our own, 
but not going to either extreme. 

I used the words of one of the organizers of the 



280 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

I. W. W. to describe its origin and its career till 
1913. I will use the description of another well- 
known labor leader for the period from 1913 to 
May, 1917. The following statement was prepared 
for me by Patrick L. Quinlan in April, 1917 : 



*' Since the great strike of 1913, when the silk industry 
of Paterson and Union Hill, New Jersey; Long Island 
City and Manhattan, New York, and Hazelton, Penn- 
sylvania, was at a standstill, the I. W. W. has given no 
concrete evidence of life in the world of labor. True, it 
has been heard from frequently during the past three 
and a half years, but the disturbance made by it was 
vocal rather than industrial. Indeed, I may safely say 
that all the energies of the I. W. W. during the past few 
years have been devoted to the Joe Hill case, the Everett 
(Washington) shooting, and to free speech fights of 
dubious value. 

**I have just returned from a tour of the industrial 
centers of the East and Middle West and I regret to 
state that I did not observe any tangible or concrete 
evidence of I. W. W. activity. On the contrary I noticed 
a tendency to abandon it all along the line. 

' ' In Chicago I was amazed to discover that the central 
body of trade-unions, the Chicago Federation of Labor, 
had amongst its delegates several men who were formerly 
active and prominent in the I. W. W. These were W. Z. 
Foster, the writer of pamphlets on syndicalism and some- 
time leader on the Pacific Coast; John A. Jones, once 
active in Butte, the Mesaba Range, and other metallifer- 
ous regions ; Morris, formerly of the hotel and restaurant 
workers of New York, and several others of more or less 
importance. 



LABOR ORGANIZATION 281 

**In New England I found only a remnant of the 
former greatness of the I. W. W. Small organizations 
in Lawrence, Providence, and one or two other cities, 
which total only about 3,500 members, comprise the 
I. W. W. of New England. Paterson, New Jersey, where 
the I. W. W. once lorded it, has now an A. F. of L. union 
which is larger than the I. W. W. local, and an un- 
attached and independent silk workers' organization. 
There is no other branch of the I. W. W. in New Jersey, 
while the great State of New York has, practically speak- 
ing, no I. W. W. representation. Baltimore and Phila- 
delphia combined have a few thousand longshoremen and 
freight handlers enrolled in the I. W. W. This with a 
few 'mixed or recruiting locals' here and there sums 
up the I. W. W. strength east of Chicago and St. Louis. 

'*In the West the position of the I. W. W. is some- 
what better. Several thousand farm hands or agricul- 
tural laborers are enrolled in what is known as the 
Agricultural Workers' Organization. All through the 
West they are dubbed as 'wobblies' and they have 
taken kindly to the name. 

' ' There were rumors in Minneapolis that the A. W. O. 
would throw overboard Haywood, the general secretary, 
or leave the I. W. W. altogether and go it alone. 

''Wherever I traveled I observed that the I. W. W. 
had no standing and made little progress when con- 
fronted with American Federation of Labor opposition. 
It only secured headway in fields ignored by the older 
organizations. 

"The general conclusions I am compelled to arrive at 
are : that industrialism is growing but very slowly ; that 
the development of machinery and the elimination of 
crafts will be the chief contributing cause to the suc- 
cessful growth of the industrial idea; that agitation for 



282 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

industrialism has not deeply permeated the minds of 
the mass of the workers, though they in a general way 
approve of the outlines of industrialism ; that while the 
A. F. of L. has absorbed and is absorbing independent 
unions (the Bricklayers is a notable example) it is not 
enthusiastically adopting the industrial program. It is 
true that industrial departments like the metal, the 
mining, the building trades, etc., are in existence, but the 
craft union in the building trades still exercises auton- 
omy and through the international organizations nulli- 
fies the usefulness of the departments in Washington. 
The mining trades alone are industrialized, but more 
for organic than educational reasons. 

**The failure of the I. W. W. can be laid to two factors, 
viz., the strength of the craft unions and the unreadiness 
of craft union officials to amalgamate ; the ignorance of 
the rank and file ; abortive and ill-timed strikes conducted 
by the I. W. W. ; opposition to the industrial idea from 
the press and the big interests; and last and most im- 
portant of all, the nonsensical talk and acts of most of 
the I. W. W. speakers and active workers. Another 
general reason for the decline of the I. W. W. is the 
psychology of the American people. They will not bother 
with failures. ' ' 

In the autumn of 1917 I asked Mr. Quinlan to 
explain for the benefiit of this chapter the activities 
of the I. W. W. in the harvest fields of the Middle 
and Far West. He replied as follows : 

** Extraordinary and peculiar conditions produce 
strange results. The quick settlement of the Rocky 
Mountain States by men of small capital or none at all, 
who could not afford to provide rooms or decent accom- 



LABOR ORGANIZATION 283 

modations for their temporary employees (harvest work 
being seasonal) ; the constant changes in the ownership 
of the farms, the migratory character of the population, 
made the establishment of a staple working-class im- 
possible, hence the roving harvest hands, or 'wobblies,' 
who ride on freight trains from Oregon to Kansas in 
June, and from there back to the later ripening wheat 
fields of North Dakota and Montana. 

' ' Except in a few of the Middle Western States those 
roving laborers are compelled to sleep outdoors all the 
time and are thereby forced to carry their own bed 
around with them. This explains the term 'blanket- 
stiff. ' None of the old-established and responsible trade- 
unions would enter this field of labor. Some men who 
were members of the I. W. W. in the cities and in the 
lumber camps being blacklisted and forced to seek 
work among the farmers, seeing the primitive condi- 
tions obtaining, sought to remedy them by preaching 
the doctrines of the I. W. W., — but in the weirdest and 
freakiest form. Like some of the mediaeval saints they 
gloried in their misery in being outcasts. Their songs, 
notably 'Hallelujah, I am a bum,' illustrate finely 
this phase of their methods and life. In time they 
developed strength and with a fraternity of feeling and 
loyalty that was most remarkable for a new and scattered 
body that wages many fights. They filled many jails 
with their enthusiasts; they were often needlessly perse- 
cuted by the petty czars of the towns of the West and 
they sometimes brought trouble on themselves by their 
own foolishness. 

"In time they developed such strength as to be able 
to organize themselves into a 'department' of the I. 
W. W. called the Agricultural Workers' Organization, 



284 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

or the A. W. 0., with its own officers, plant, etc. It 
only nominally acknowledges the jurisdiction of Hay- 
wood and the I. W. W. executive board. A case of the 
child growing more powerful than the parent. 

*'It is a mistake to accuse them of being anti-war or 
anti-American. On war matters and war issues the 
members of the A. W. 0. say: *We don't give a hang. 
We are simply trying to get more of the kale for 
the blanket-stiff and the wobbly.' They resort to a lot 
of strange talk about sabotage, but it is in most cases 
foam and froth. 

"The majority of its members are American by birth. 
If they fail to see the value of citizenship it is because 
no attempt was ever made to give them the protection 
that should go with ordered liberty and statehood." 

The problem of labor organization today is not 
that of the skilled craftsman whose scarcity gives 
him some power apart from his organization and 
whose trade gives a natural rallying cry. The 
present problem is how to gain and keep indus- 
trial advantage for the unskilled, not as being 
ignorant or indolent, but as being inevitably the 
great mass of labor, because invention and ma- 
chinery are every day producing the **fool proof*' 
machine and are rendering skill superfluous. 

Scientific management and improved machinery 
are making production ampler but are not ren- 
dering distribution more generous. Our call for 
labor from all countries, our consequent introduc- 
tion of European peasant labor to industrial enter- 
prises, our inventiveness and cheapening of cost 



LABOR ORGANIZATION 285 

by machinery with the tendency of money wages 
to fall, prices to rise, and skill to be less required, 
logically create labor organizations of the I. W. W. 
type, — largely of the unskilled, the disappointed, 
the embittered who trust only in their own efforts. 

The problem of the casual worker is bound up 
with such an army and its organization. If Amer- 
ica needs thousands of men to reap its harvests 
she cannot ignore them after the harvests. Among 
these harvest hands are the college boys who earn 
during the summer months money for their edu- 
cation, and can return to college. But what hap- 
pens to the rest? Who is trying to place them? 
To call them vagrants and herd them in bull-pens 
and deport them is fatuous and an insult to the 
hands that rescued the food supply of the world 
from ripening in vain. 

The I. W. W. have helped the unskilled. 
Again, who has done anything of general im- 
portance for the economic benefit of working- 
women and children? The I. W. W. by organizing 
these neglected and pitiably weak groups of work- 
ers have become the representatives of chivalry 
in the labor movement. The word chivalry comes 
from cheval, a horse. The chivalrous man in the 
old days was the knight on horseback — the symbol 
of armed might. The knight sought to redress 
wrongs, especially those suffered by women and 
the weak. But in our modern world the chival- 
rous man is this '^ vagrant'^ I. W. W. Vagrant 
means a man on foot — a walker, a wanderer. 



286 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

**The I. W. W. that I knew,'' says Frank 
Tannenbaum in a letter to me on this subject, 
**I shall always look back upon with the greatest 
of reverence. Nowhere have I found that ideal- 
ism, that love of one's kind, that social minded- 
ness and sincerity. Nowhere as yet have I seen 
that willingness of self-sacrifice, that exulting joy 
in human development, that hope and faith in 
human progress and in the possibility of a more 
beautiful life. 

"The men and women that I knew in the 
I. W. W. ; the hard-working, rugged, and aspiring 
human beings, whose whole life seemed bound up 
with the struggles of their class to rise above its 
poverty and disorganization, were in pure human 
worth equal to the very best I know. 

"The I. W. W. is the foreshadowing of a 
working-class organization that in the face of cur- 
rent tendencies seems almost inevitable. The 
I. W. W. as such may never complete its purpose 
of organizing a mighty and powerful industrial 
democracy, but it is serving the purpose of a 
pioneer in the struggle for equitable organization 
of our industrial life and as pioneer it has suf- 
fered the misrepresentation and calumnies usually 
heaped upon those who foreshadow the better and 
bigger things in life. ' ' * 

*For the philosophy of Syndicalism, see Georges Sorel, "Re- 
flections on Violence." 



XIII 

THE CURE FOR DEMOCRACY- 
" MORE DEMOCRACY " 



The moral question's ollus plain enough, — 

It's jes' the human-nature side that's tough. 

Wut's best to think mayn't puzzle me nor you. 

The pinch comes in decidin' wut to du; 

Ef you read History, all runs smooth ez grease, 

Coz there the men ain't nothin' more'n ideas, — 

But come to make it, ez we must today, 

Th' idees hev arms an' legs an' stop the way." 

James Russell Lowell, 
The Biglow Papers, No. VI. 

"He drew a circle that shut me out — 
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. 
But love and I had the wit to win: 
We drew a circle that took him in! " 

Edwin Mabkham. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE CURE FOR DEMOCRACY— *^ MORE 
DEMOCRACY'^ 

pHILLIPS BROOKS once said to me with 
•*- evident pride that there was no line of 
European kings that in ability compared with the 
list of American presidents. Democracy has done 
some things well. 

Booker Washington, at a meeting of which I 
was chairman, gave a moving description of his 
early years. **In the year 1859 or I860,'' he 
said, **I was born a slave in Virginia"; he then 
went on to give the audience a picture of his boy- 
hood and of his final enrollment as a pupil at 
Hampton under General Armstrong. When he 
finished, a little man in the audience jumped up, 
and cried out, **Mr. Booker Washington says 
that in 1859 or 1860 he was born a slave in Vir- 
ginia. I want him to know that he is not the only 
man in the room born a slave. In 1859 or 1860 I 
was bom a slave in Ireland. It makes no differ- 
ence that he was a chattel slave and I an indus- 
trial slave — we were both born to slavery. The 
emancipation of his race will not be complete 
until he has led it to industrial freedom." De- 
mocracy has not settled all our problems. 

289 



290 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

Democracy Has not Satisfied Expectations 

Democracy has not satisfied expectations. It 
countenanced slavery until 1863. After a success- 
ful war against the slave States, and after giving 
citizenship to the negroes, our republic permitted 
the disfranchisement of millions of the emanci- 
pated race. America contains millions of paupers 
and prostitutes. Democracy, then, has not as yet 
shown the ability to solve the problem either of 
poverty or of happiness. As an institution it is 
regarded as not beyond the experimental stage. 
We remember the commotion excited a genera- 
tion ago by James Russell Lowell's phrase, ** De- 
mocracy is still an experiment. ' ' We would not 
become so hot today over his words. 

Liberty, equality, and fraternity are still shy 
birds, not yet ensnared by the phrases of the 
Declaration of Independence. The working-man 
who depends upon a political party for his job, 
who must live in a certain ward or have taken 
from him the ticket which places him on the pay- 
roll of a favored contractor, has few of the sen- 
sations of a free man. The street-car conductor 
who is sent to jail for knocking down a fare and 
who sees the millionaire forger or embezzler go 
free, has little sense of equality under democratic 
institutions. As for fraternity, if it is even 
preached from Christian pulpits in these days, 
the preacher is called a Socialist, which, perhaps, 
indicates how far brotherliness is from being an 



1 



THE CURE FOR DEMOCRACY 291 

expected asset either of Christianity or of democ- 
racy. As capital becomes more reactionary, labor 
becomes more clamorous. 



Demockacy Is Used as a Cloak 

Under these circumstances, democracy having 
failed to meet the general expectation, various 
earlier institutions have fastened themselves 
upon democracy as means for the immediate at- 
tainment of the good things of life. The gang, 
the clan, theocracy, the feudal state, the mon- 
archy, the oligarchy, are all appealed to by re- 
publican citizens in various kinds of imperia in 
imperioy who scheme to get even with democracy 
for their disappointment, or to use it as a cloak 
under which to revive the earlier and easier 
forms. 

In short, inferior forms of social and national 
organization have been resorted to within a de- 
mocracy, to secure for the individual that meas- 
ure of personal safety and advantage which he 
had hoped democracy itself would afford. What 
can you expect I Should not a man protect himself 
in any way he can against the harshness of life 
or of institutions? If he cannot have freedom, 
equality, and fraternity at the hands of the state 
which promises it, then he will join a lower order 
of social organization within the state if it prom- 
ises him what he wants. 

There are many people who are not aware of 



292 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

their antagonism toward the state in which they 
live, and who hardly may consider themselves to 
belong to either of these groups hostile to de- 
mocracy. But their ideas are so remote from de- 
mocracy that they are on a lower plane, some- 
where between the savage fighting for his own 
hand and the prince protecting his prerogatives. 
While in body they are members of a so-called 
democracy, in thought they are governed by ideas 
thousands of years removed from democracy. 

The Gang a Reversion to Primitive Civilization 

The Bowery tough and the slugging repeaters 
at election day are not democrats but the mental 
associates of naked savages. The tribal instinct 
that collects the *'gang'' in the slums, under a 
leader who has fought his way up in personal en- 
counters, is a repetition of the earliest history of 
civilization. Yet these gangs have political power 
and are in fact a recognized part of political ma- 
chinery. Here within democracy is a reversion to 
the most primitive type of human association. 

Not only is the gang a travesty upon democ- 
racy, not only does it perform injurious and un- 
lawful acts, but its ethical standards conflict at 
every point with organized society. In other 
words, not only is our state composed of frag- 
ments of older social and political units, but we 
suffer from the immature ethics that accompany 
these earlier ideals. The gang leader wiU not 



THE CURE FOR DEMOCRACY 293 

only shoot to protect his lieutenant from arrest, 
but when he himself is shot he will not divulge the 
name of the assailant, reserving, according to his 
code, the right of private revenge. 

**What are the chief elements of the gang 
spirit?'' asks Luther Gulick. ^^ First and foremost 
is a loyalty to the other members of the gang — 
a loyalty which no consideration of personal ad- 
vantage will shake, but which will lead to the 
making of any sacrifice that may be needed in 
time of peril for the sake of the gang, or for in- 
dividual members of it. It involves a willingness 
to fight together, to stand together under all con- 
ditions which we instinctively call masculine.'' 

The Clan Revived in Politicai. Machines 

In notorious political machines we see the re- 
vival of the clan. The Celtic blood, Irish, Scotch, 
or Scotch-Irish, of so many of our politicians is 
significant. They perpetuate the clan organiza- 
tion in America. Ireland, according to George 
Moore, himself an Irishman and a landowner, 
was feudal even into the present generation. How 
natural, then, that immigrants from that country 
should ally themselves in our great cities with 
that form of political organization which utilized 
these enormous sources of warm-hearted loyalty 
developed by the institutions and the tempera- 
ment of the Irish people. Of course, the result 
went further in our political machines than 



294 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

feudal loyalty. Practically, it represented a sur- 
vival within a democracy of the clan system, — 
unquestioning fidelity to a chief. Indeed, this 
name, ^ ^ Chief, ' ^ is today one of the most popular 
among the sturdy political workers who receive 
their reward from political machines. The head 
of every department, the superior within the de- 
partment, in conversation is addressed by those 
below, and with evident relish, as ** Chief.'' The 
psychology of this habit is too patent for com- 
ment. 



The Medieval. Theocracy Persists in the 
Church 

Theocracy is a power in America. The Roman 
Church — an attempt to combine politics and re- 
ligion, the state and the Christian Church — al- 
though now largely stripped of direct political 
power, is a theocratic government, the remnant 
of a mediaeval state. As a state, the Papacy per- 
formed important services from the fall of the 
Roman Empire in the West until the rise of the 
spirit of nationality in Europe: it preserved in 
itself remnants of Roman culture and it over- 
awed northern Barbarism. Although its great 
political service is passed, it continues to wear 
the habit of a state. It has its legates, its diplo- 
matic agents, its orders of nobility, its Swiss 
Guard, and what is more, it demands as neces- 
sary to its existence temporal power. This pre- 



THE CURE FOR DEMOCRACY 295 

tender to a lost throne has sufficient political fol- 
lowing to form a party in European as well as in 
American politics. In Germany the Catholic 
party, the Centrum, is opposed to parliamentary 
government. In England Catholicism has been 
conservative, even financing the Ulster revolution 
to thwart home rule. 

The prelates of the Catholic Church, at the time 
of its recent centenary celebration in New York, 
were repeatedly called by the newspapers, and by 
the Catholics themselves, *^the Princes of the 
Church. ' ^ The flag of the Papacy, blowing against 
the Stars and Stripes, paraded our streets. The 
orators of Catholicism denounced our public 
schools, and lauded the monarchical principles of 
Romanism, expressing surprise that it got along 
so well with the democratic principles of the 
United States, not aware that Catholicism got 
along well because the democratic principle has 
not come to complete self-consciousness and has 
meanwhile surrendered its power into the hands 
of bosses and magnates, who, receiving favors 
from the Church, return them with interest. This 
monarchical principle in the Roman Church is 
emphasized, too, in the patents of nobility given 
by the Pope to American citizens, who even 
stamp coronets and their titles upon their visit- 
ing cards. 



296 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

Feudalism as Bondage to the Job 

Feudalism is resorted to in America. The de- 
pendence of thousands of persons for subsistence 
upon one person who has control of the elements 
of subsistence for them, as represented in land, 
mines, or machinery; the dependence of thou- 
sands, running from highly paid superintendents 
to poorly paid laborers, who practically are 
serfs, and are held by their poverty to one part 
of the country, reproduce the economic effect of 
feudalism. 

** Bondage to the land was the basis of villain- 
age in the old regime; bondage to the job will be 
the basis of villainage in the new. ' ' * This mod- 
ern feudalism is not landed or military but indus- 
trial. I knew men in a mill city in Massachusetts 
who had never been on a railway train since they 
entered the city twenty years before. Their pov- 
erty tied them to the town as effectually as the 
feudal law tied the serf to the soil. Only feudal 
instincts have kept the negro so long after his 
emancipation upon the soil of the South ; the same 
feudal instinct accounts for the high-handed 
treatment he has received — as if he could not 
at any time flee permanently from his tor- 
mentors. 

Another mark of feudalism is the tendency in 
great mercantile centers for owners of land not 
to sell but to rent. Their method is a feudal 

' * Ghent, " Our Benevolent Feudalism," p. 184. 




THE CURE FOR DEMOCRACY 297 

method. Their position is over-lordship. That, 
in our modern parlance, a lord is called a mil- 
lionaire or a captain of industry makes no dif- 
ference. He is the person who by possessions 
and power is able to demand and secure the serv- 
ices of social groups below his own, and even of 
churches and courts. 

Monarchy has been lauded on American soil 
by such writers as Miinsterberg, who claimed 
that the loyalty upon which a state depends can 
only be developed by attachment to the person 
of a sovereign. 

In the South, the survival of aristocratic priv- 
ilege is seen in the withdrawal of the suffrage 
from the negro and an insufferable social and 
economic treatment of them at last resulting in 
an exodus of black labor. In the North, a new 
aristocracy of wealth would like to withdraw the 
suffrage from the lower ranks of citizens, and 
actually does curb it by party machinery. 

AcTUALi Slaveey Still 

We not only have in our so-called democracy 
a tribal organization of gangsters, which, by mur- 
der and other criminal acts, has undermined our 
institutions, a clan political loyalty which weak- 
ens the state, a theocratic institution wielding 
some of the temporal glories of the past, a pow- 
erful industrial feudalism and the divine right of 
monarchy appealed to; but something still more 



298 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

primitive. We have actual slavery. Chattel 
slavery, while banished by law from industrial 
life, is still in existence in our prisons when con- 
victs work without remuneration. 



Other and More Subtle Enemies of Democracy 

Democracy has other, more subtle, enemies. 
Take, for instance, Calvinism, which did not re- 
gard the state as an important means in itself 
of spiritual salvation, but only as a policeman by 
which the behavior of the individual could be 
made to conform to the standards of religious 
rulers. The state, as a policeman to carry out 
the mandates of a theocracy which promises to 
save the individual who accepts a certain theol- 
ogy, is far from a modern definition of democracy. 
Take Lutheranism, which quashed the democratic 
principle halfway to its fulfillment. 

Current illustrations of the remoteness of the 
Church from democracy are to be found in the 
objection raised today to a discussion in churches 
of such movements as Woman Suffrage, the La- 
bor Problem, and Prohibition. 

Mysticism and the idea of the inner life is a 
foe to democracy in so far as it urges a with- 
drawal from action and from contemplation of 
the outward things of life, in order to find in si- 
lence and the secrecy of the soul a mystic il- 
lumination from direct contact with God. That 
God is found only as one withdraws from his 



THE CURE FOR DEMOCRACY 299 

works is as undemocratic as to say that God is 
found only through a theology protected by a 
police state. 

The sacramental system is also a foe to democ- 
racy, when it asserts that there is a natural 
cleavage between the human and the divine, only 
to be bridged by an authoritative hierarchy. 
Under such a definition of life, the family, as 
well as the ordinary institutions and organiza- 
tions of life, is condemned. 

Realization of Disadvantages Precedes Inde- 
pendence 

But it is of this very human stuff — condemned 
by the dogmatists, fled away from by the mystics, 
and organized merely for the defense of theology 
by ultra Protestants, it is of this human life, 
with the family, with friendship, with business 
and with art, with law and also with religion — 
that democracy itself is made. A government is 
not to be deferred until the governed are per- 
fected to carry on the machinery of the state, 
but is perfected in its very imperfections when 
it is permitted by experiment to advance from 
one step to another of enlightenment and prog- 
ress. The excellence of democracy is not the su- 
perior institution it turns out. The spiritually 
free and self -governed individual that democracy 
utilizes and develops, is its chief product and 
glory. 



300 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

Inasmuch as all of us have been subjected to 
one or the other of these religious influences — 
the influences of Catholicism or Protestantism or 
Mysticism — we are to that extent born foes of 
democracy. If, therefore, we carry over what we 
have learned from religion into our economic at- 
titude toward working-men, it is not at all sur- 
prising. The sooner we realize the disadvantage 
of our religious education — the cowardice of its 
view of human nature, the inferiority of its con- 
ception of God and of his workings, the essen- 
tial unbrotherliness of its premises — the sooner 
are we likely to correct the individualistic Ameri- 
can position. Then, too, we shall be in a mood 
to welcome the efforts of the great masses for 
their own industrial and social independence. 
We shall gladly assist them not only to secure 
justice but the fullest self-expression and the 
development of latent gifts which can carry great 
benefits to their fellows, gifts that await the en- 
couragement of better pay, better health, and 
more leisure. 

These Lower Institutions Are the Foes of 
Democracy 

The trouble with democracy, then, in America 
is that it has been seized upon by a number of 
lower evolutionary social institutions which are 
worrying its life and are quite capable of de- 
stroying its life, if there is not an infusion into 



THE CURE FOR DEMOCRACY 301 

democratic blood of a more truly democratic 
spirit. I make no doubt, nor would I waste argu- 
ments in proving, that democracy is a higher 
evolutionary form of government than the tribe, 
the clan, feudalism, monarchy, or theocracy. But 
it can only proceed upon its way by killing these 
inferior forms that gnaw upon its intestines. 
Democracy must become more the thing it 
claims to be. The profoundest psychology of to- 
day is almost based upon the emancipation of the 
individual from parental domination ; upon revolt 
from authority; upon the perception of a law of 
being and free obedience. 

The Cure for This Political. Disease Is More 
Democracy 

The cure for this disease, this cancer of de- 
mocracy, is more democracy; more vital life- 
blood for the organism itself. Disease in the hu- 
man body is discovered to be due to the presence 
of germs. Laboratories have photographed a 
good many of these germs, and have studied 
them with care. They turn out to be living 
things which once had a certain right to their 
lives, but which higher organisms successfully 
passed in the struggle for existence. These mi- 
nute and early forms of life now attach them- 
selves as parasites to the higher organisms, 
which, devitalized or weakened by accident, by 
labor, by anxiety, by luxury, become a prey to 



302 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

the attacks of that which as a form of life is 
infinitely inferior to itself. 

There are two cures for disease: to kill the 
germ directly or to make the body upon which 
the germ has fastened so freshly strong that it 
throws off or destroys by its own operation the 
perilous foe living upon it. This latter should 
be democracy's cure. The true elements of its 
ideal must make it so freshly strong that it 
sloughs off these earlier forms of political and 
social life which are inferior to it, but which 
flourishing within it, if permitted to have their 
way, will be the destruction of the later and 
higher embodiments of the hopes of humanity. 

We discover, then, that the United States of 
America, a constitutional democracy, is preyed 
upon by rudimentary social organisms, survivals 
of all the primitive institutions of human society. 
They are perceived in our midst not as archaeo- 
logical exhibits but as powerful and militant 
bodies which fight to secure privileges and posi- 
tion by methods of intrigue and iniquity, regard- 
less of the ideals and the methods of a republic. 

The cure for all these rudimentary survivals 
within our democracy of past political forms — 
the gang, the clan, feudalism, theocracy, aristoc- 
racy — is to have more democracy. The machine 
politician utilizes all these undemocratic forces; 
if successful he rewards his helpers at the pub- 
lic expense, who thereby fasten themselves more 
deeply into the body politic. They have a right 



THE CURE FOR DEMOCRACY 303 

to get on in America, but not at the expense of 
the life-blood of the state. 



The Contribution of the Jew 

The possibility of this infusion of a truer and 
full-blooded democracy into the spectral throne 
upon which since the Declaration of Independ- 
ence we have been trying to live, seems likely to 
be helped forward very materially by that race 
which has come to us in large numbers of late, 
the Hebrew. It is a significant fact that the He- 
brews in New York during the last ten years 
have, generally speaking, cast their votes and 
voices in favor of the reform movements. The 
Hebrew people have small sense of leadership. 
This is a piece of good fortune. If they had a 
sense of leadership, they would join the clan, or 
the hurrah for the feudal lord, or kiss the hand 
of theocracy. Some of them, as it is, have 
aligned themselves with powerful organizations. 
But the ancientness of Hebrew civilization, the 
very antiquity of their political life, has carried 
the race as a whole beyond political organization. 

They represent a moral rather than a military 
national ideal; principles are dearer to them 
than military or political force. Their career has 
made them individualistic. They occupy an in- 
tellectual censorship far higher than either the 
boss or the baron has ever dreamed, and it is 
this coming of the intellectuals, professional, and 



304 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

brainy folk, who do not hark back to out-worn 
social forms but forward to match their ideas 
with new forms, that promises so much to Ameri- 
can politics. I expect to see the Jew almost the 
savior of American ideas. He will take them 
out of the theoretical stage — where a good citizen 
is presented with liberty and at the same time 
is smothered under conditions which prevent its 
expression and enjoyment, — he will fashion dem- 
ocratic institutions so that their liberties may be 
enjoyed by all. 

The grand method of democracy is to draw 
wider and wider circles of inclusiveness. When 
a democracy is unable to draw a new circle by its 
sympathy with enlarging human needs, its day is 
done; the momentum which originated it has 
failed. Not to shut out or lock up those who 
criticize it from within its own body, but to ex- 
pand its institutions by the spirit of larger justice 
until they embrace the wills and affections of 
those who thought themselves left out — is its way. 

Nor is this method sentimental or academic. It 
has been practically the method of English politi- 
cal development from the earliest time. An Amer- 
ican is astonished to learn that during a large 
part of the middle ages the government of London 
and the great English boroughs — the pattern of 
our own city government — included the industrial 
worker with all his problems and complaints. He 
was first a member of a guild before he could be- 
come a citizen. What is more surprising, the 



THE CURE FOR DEMOCRACY 305 

London aldermen, for a considerable period, were 
the masters of guilds — almost what we should call 
labor leaders — at any rate, head of unions of 
craftsmen. In this way medieval England at- 
tempted to continue for its artisans a status and 
an influence in public affairs. 



The Variety in Democracy Must Be Directed 

If the production of variety is Nature's effort, 
as shown, for instance, in the value of two sexes 
over one sex, in the results of selection and en- 
vironment, then democracy is an enormous instru- 
ment in Nature's hand, for it produces a greater 
variety than any other form of government. 
Further, it can be said as applying to the United 
States, that a democracy built up of *^ sovereign 
states" affords a greater means of securing 
variety than a solitary state with only one im- 
portant legislative body. 

But the object of variety is not satisfied in 
itself. Nature is not trying merely to produce 
as many different sorts of a thing as possible. 
Nature is creating variety in order that the best 
may be saved as seed, to produce the future. 
Democracy must not be satisfied when it produces 
the greatest number of different individuals or 
of institutions. Democracy must ^x its gains, it 
must select and perpetuate the best type of its 
individuals and of its experimental institutions, 
tried out in dozens of States. 



306 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

The Means — the Federal Legislature 

The Federal legislature in a large way must 
be the instrument of this progressive policy. If 
we want to know at what point progress can be 
discovered in the moment of birth, it should be 
mainly expected in Congress, which selects the 
most successful of the various State experiments, 
and establishes it as the law of the land. Con- 
sequently, the Constitution, or its interpretation, 
must expand to meet this legislative progress, if 
the enormous advantage of forty-eight experi- 
mental stations in politics, and the incredible ad- 
vantage of 110,000,000 individual American ex- 
perimenters are to be coined into concrete insti- 
tutional improvement. 

*'He that will not apply new remedies must expect 
new evils; for time is the greatest innovator. And if 
time, of course, alters things to the worse, and wisdom 
and council shall not alter them to the better, what 
shall be the end?"* 

* Lord Bacon'8 " History of Life and Death." 



XIV 

WHAT THE WORKING-MEN WANT- 
INDUSTRIAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 



"Thou Trade! thou king of the modern days! 

Change thy ways, 
Change thy ways; 
Let the sweaty laborers file 
A little while, 
A little while, 
Where Art and Nature sing and smile." 
Sidney Lanieb, 

The Symphony. 

" I submit that the working class have as much right as any 
section or class in the community to enjoy all the advantages of 
science, art and literature. No field of knowledge, no outlook in 
life should be closed against the workers. They should demand 
their share in the efi'ulgence of life and all that was created for 
the enjoyment of mankind. 

"... the working class must be free, not only economically 
but intellectually." 

J. Labkin, 

quoted by William English Walling, in 

The Socialism of Today, p. 306. 

" The natural impulse of every social body is to harmonize the 
various forces of which it is composed. All strife or dissonance 
between these forces is an indication of disease. 

" Every revolution is an attempt to co-ordinate the springs of 
social progress, an attempt to obtain recognition for an hitherto 
neglected element, and to procure for that element its rightful 
place in the constitution of the power that governs the national 
edifice." 

Mazzini, 
Life and Writings, Vol. I, pp. 156, 157. 



CHAPTER XIV 

WHAT THE WORKING-MEN WANT— IN- 
DUSTRIAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 

TN the United States the lines are becoming 
^ more closely drawn between individualism 
and socialism; the fears of capital are more evi- 
dent; the convictions of socialists, in spite of 
party differences, more confident. Several mon- 
eyed organizations, as well as weighty personali- 
ties, have entered the field openly or secretly 
against socialism. Eminent ecclesiastics have 
organized a militant anti-socialistic union. Ru- 
mors are now heard that fearing the progress 
of socialism as a result of international disorder 
the Church of Rome and financial interests are 
working together for a speedy peace. 

Is A Fight in America Against Socialism 

Wise? 

Is not this marshaling of forces hasty and in- 
judicious ? Does a lining up of capitalists against 
socialists show a sufficient understanding of so- 
cialism and of democracy! Millionaires who 
band together to fight socialism certainly do not 
appear to appreciate their own power. What- 



310 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

ever socialism is, socialists are, for the most 
part, unsuccessful folk or they are dreamers and 
philanthropists — people with a lot of imagina- 
tion, pity, and liking for mankind. Wealth is so 
powerful that, if it consulted its own dignity, it 
would neglect such critics. Through the control 
of the institutional side of life, it can silence 
their voices when it will, and so can afford to 
listen long to discover if they speak truth or 
falsehood. 

**The eagle suffers little birds to sing, 

And is not careful what they mean thereby, 

Knowing that with the shadow of his wing 
He can at pleasure stint their melody.*' 

An appeal of our times — not drawn from the 
field of ethics, but from the hunting field, or 
wherever chance and danger may be faced for 
the sheer sake of audacious combat — is, *^Be a 
Sport!'' What a large opportunity lies open to 
the sportsman in social controversy! Sympa- 
thetic attention paid the poor man's view of life 
by rich men, would be the ^^ sportiest" of propo- 
sitions. Their generosity towards the weak, their 
confidence in reason and justice, their support of 
free discussion, their wager of power and wealth 
upon the result — in short, their courage would 
excite our admiration. Years of training in col- 
lege athletics and expensive sports, on sea and 
land, seem fruitless, if the sportsman when con- 
fronted by human problems is panic-stricken and 



WHAT THE WORKING-MEN WANT 311 

denies his opponent a chance; but silences him, 
starves him, sandbags him. 



Socialism Is at Least Genuine 

Socialism, however erroneous, is a serious 
and enthusiastic attempt to solve pressing eco- 
nomic problems. The ^^ Labor Question" Sydney 
Brooks calls one of * insoluble conundrums.'^ 
Let us Yankees try to ** guess'' it. Our attack 
therefore, had better be made upon the problem 
itself or upon those who are indifferent to it. 
Mr. Taft is wrong. Socialism is not our great- 
est problem. The economic conditions that excite 
socialists and many anti-socialists are our great- 
est problem — namely: the anomaly of a demo- 
cratic state and an absolutist industrial system 
living together. 

Conspicuous opposition to socialism contributes 
to the very method by which socialism claims it 
will triumph. Extreme socialists exult at every 
fresh demarcation between them and their ad- 
versaries. By making more clean-cut their dif- 
ferences, and by forcing into opposing ranks so- 
cialists and non-socialists, the ''class struggle^' 
is accentuated and promoted, which the followers 
of Marx prophesy will produce the disruption of 
society — *^the social revolution" — and clear the 
way for a socialistic state. 



312 FAIE PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

Socialism Is not Vandalism 

Socialists whom I know do not itch to lay 
hands upon other people *s property or to reduce 
everybody to a dead level of pay. They want 
what most men want — working and living condi- 
tions favorable to good health. They also want 
opportunities for their children and they want 
leisure for the enjoyment of nature, music, and 
art. Our problem, then, is not how to fight an 
**ism" — ** socialism*^ — but how to arrange mat- 
ters so as to give poor men and women more of 
what we all hunger for — the joy of life. 

The socialists whom I hear are mild in their 
demands. They wish to be sure of work, and 
they hope for such an organization of industry 
in the future that their children may be sure of 
work. They do not ask to be supported by any- 
body's labor except their own, or to have their 
children supported by anybody's labor except 
their own. 

The new order of things, if it come, will not be 
directly produced by socialists, but by their foes. 
** Class struggle," ** surplus values," *Hhe eco- 
nomic interpretation of history" — Marxian for- 
mulas that express half-truths — are not the open 
sesame to a lovelier industrial future. So, in 
fighting socialism, the conservative classes are 
facing in the wrong direction. Their enemies are 
of their own household. Current legislation in- 
dicates the lines of future advances — what might 



WHAT THE WORKING-MEN WANT 313 

be called the liquidation of privilege. Public 
Service Commissions, Rates Commissions, Cor- 
poration Tax Laws, Income Taxes, and not so- 
cialistic platforms, will, for a long time to come, 
be responsible for our economic reforms. Notice 
the list of Federal Commissions that a few years 
ago would have been thought socialistic: Civil 
Service Commission, Eight-Hour Day Commis- 
sion, Federal Reserve Board, Federal Trade Com- 
mission, Interstate Commerce Commission, Na- 
tional Forest Reservation Commission, United 
States Board of Mediation and Conciliation, Fed- 
eral Farm Loan Board. 

Socialists when they deal with political pro- 
grams ask, in their simplicity, for such extreme 
and revolutionary changes that they frighten the 
average citizen, whether capitalist or wage-earner, 
and for this reason they cannot soon secure an 
overwhelming following. They are firing at a 
target so far away that they do not hit it. But 
while socialists are absorbed in this harmless 
game of long-distance and ineffective firing, our 
statesmen of practical sagacity and popular in- 
stinct may, by close range and effective shots, 
weaken monopoly and privilege. 

Public Regulation, not Socialism, Will Limit 
Capital 

For instance, the limitation and even the pub- 
lic ownership of capital are not likely to be af- 



314 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

fected by socialism, but by public regulation of 
monopoly. When the highest profits are at last 
secured by trusts and pools, which practically 
destroy competition, the next move of the con- 
sumer will be to control by law the rates and 
prices of such combinations of capital. But 
publicly controlled capital will have a tendency 
to become publicly owned, because investors, 
afraid of an increased public control of property, 
with a consequent reduction of profits, will not 
buy the securities. This tendency is already seen 
in some public utilities. 

Socialism Protests the Individual's 
Helplessness 

Again, the industrial battle today is not be- 
tween socialism and individualism, as recent 
prospectuses announce. Socialism is a new form 
of individualism, which offers what Jeffersonian- 
ism supposed it gave when most Americans were 
farmers — an equal chance to individuals. Social- 
ists wish to make the government an umpire who 
will see that every one has a fair chance; only, 
to prevent the umpire from being biased by evil 
influences, socialists propose to make the umpire 
more powerful than the influences. 

The one point to which the socialistic criticism 
of the present industrial regime continually re- 
turns is that of the wage-earner's industrial 
helplessness — now that he must secure the con- 



WHAT THE WORKING-MEN WANT 315 

sent of the owner of machinery and of tools be- 
fore he can have work or wages. The wage- 
earner is called ^ ^ a proletarian, ' ' ' ' a child of the 
abyss,'' ^^a wage-slave." The socialistic outcry 
is largely the human insistence upon individual 
importance and individual value in the face of 
this modern industrial helplessness. It demands 
more than a trade-union or an industrial union 
behind the individual; it demands the whole or- 
ganization of the state behind the individual. 

Why Dkive Sympathizeks into Further Revolt? 

Many religious persons call themselves social- 
ists because they believe that gross misery, ig- 
norance, and injustice exist which can readily be 
remedied. These persons are not theoretical so- 
cialists, not Marxians, but keen well-wishers of 
humanity, who are convinced that life needs to 
be rationalized and who are warmed by the in- 
tensity, comradeship, and hopefulness of the so- 
cialist propaganda. If there were a thorough- 
going fight made against socialism, these persons 
would be liable to join the socialist party. 

Many writers and professional men confess to 
each other that they are socialists at heart. 
Would it be wise to drive them to the necessity 
of absolute definition? 

Many clerks, financial managers, even business 
men who have made their money in slow and con- 
servative fashion, are more sympathetic with the 



316 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

complaints and cures of socialism than trust 
magnates and high financiers imagine. Ought 
they, by a still greater sympathy with the * * under 
dog,'' to be turned over bodily to the socialist 
party? 

Then there are the thousands of intellectual 
young men, college graduates, observant, trav- 
eled, kept out of pulpits by distrusted creeds, 
whom we ought not to throw into further revolt. 
They contemplate our social wilderness with as 
much confident strength as a pioneer contem- 
plated the forests that were to yield a place for 
his home and fields of corn. These young men 
can live on little; they despise social ambition; 
they cannot be frightend, and they ransack the 
world for sociological facts. You meet them at 
the settlement-houses, upon philanthropic com- 
mittees, at your State capitol opposing bills in- 
jurious to the workers, in meetings where speak- 
ers say what they think, often in missions and 
parish-houses where there is practical work be- 
ing done for the poor. These youths seem al- 
ways to be singing Whitman's hymn: 

Have the elder races halted? 
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there 

beyond the seas? 
We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the 
lesson — 

Pioneers, Pioneers! 

Now this marching song of democracy is echoed 
by a vast antiphonal in China and in Russia. The 



WHAT THE WORKING-MEN WANT 317 

elder races have rushed forward; it is the new 
world that halts. 



Disloyalty and Ingratitude Are Today the 
Characteristics of the Working-classes as 
Experienced by Their Employers. 

The newspaper-reading public and conserva- 
tive business men, when confronted by the labor 
problem, are often confused by the behavior of 
working-men toward employers famous for their 
kindness. During the Pullman strike it was 
hard for the public to understand how the em- 
ployees of the company could be so hostile and 
could commit acts of violence. Had not Mr. 
Pullman given them an ideal town to live in, all 
at his own expense? 

A like wonderment beheld the strike of the 
National Cash Register employees, at Dayton, 
Ohio, where John H. Patterson and his associates 
had done everything they could think of to make 
the inside and the outside of their factories at- 
tractive, and to brighten and enrich the lives of 
their employees; where the employers were as 
proud of their services to their employees and to 
the community as they were proud of their busi- 
ness success — employers who almost broke their 
hearts over the ingratitude of their work-people. 

Similar cases are so numerous that J. Thayer 
Lincoln, a distinguished graduate of Harvard, a 
sympathizer with working-men, whom he knows, 



318 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

both as a manufacturer and as a philanthropist, 
makes this deliberate statement, — **In my per- 
sonal experience, the man who is most thoroughly- 
hated by his employees is the man who has the 
physical, mental, and spiritual welfare of his 
working-men most at heart. ' * * 

The working-man is certainly ungrateful, and 
ingratitude is that fault in the poor which 
philanthropists can least endure. Among 
amateur religious and philanthropic workers 
there is a constant secession, due to their 
disgust at the lack of gratitude shown by 
their beneficiaries. 

Gratitude is not a test of beneficence and 
ought not to be expected. It puts the giver upon 
a pedestal and the recipient upon his knees. Even 
great natures do not easily discover gratitude 
among their virtues. Goethe found gratitude so 
difficult that, when he was a young man, he culti- 
vated it by special exercise. Seated in his room, 
he recalled to mind the friends and relatives who 
had given him the objects his eyes beheld, and 
thereupon he mentally thanked them. Dr. Sam- 
uel Johnson and Sir Joshua Reynolds became 
friends over the discovery of their mutual an- 
tipathy to gratitude. In a house where they were 
both calling and met for the first time, a lady of 
the company continually bemoaned the death of 
a friend. **At any rate, madam," broke in Sir 
Joshua, *^you have been relieved of a burden of 

* " The City of the Dinner Pail," p. 78. 



WHAT THE WORKING-MEN WANT 319 

gratitude/' It was this astute reading of 
human nature by the painter that won Dr. 
Johnson. They walked away from the house 
together. 

Ingratitude is as common among the needy 
as among self-respecting working-men. A com- 
mon explanation fits both cases: More than two 
thousand years ago Aristotle read the philan- 
thropist's riddle when he pointed out that grati- 
tude is less keen than benevolence, because it is 
more agreeable to give than to receive. The 
benefactor enjoys himself more than the benefi- 
ciary.* 

WoRKEKs Want Better Wages, not Uplift 

But a more economic and personal explanation 
of the working-man's ingratitude can be found. 
The working-man's great complaint today is his 
helplessness, and it is perfectly clear that what- 
ever increases this sense of helplessness will 
really increase his outcry. Working-men don't 
like to have things done for them. The more 
that is done for them, the more they feel in the 
power of the person who is responsible even for 
their benefits. 

Paradoxically enough, whatever the man of 
power, the capitalist, the employer, does out of a 
good heart or philanthropic intent or even from 
shrewd business perception, to alleviate, as he 

♦ " Ethics," Bk. IX, Ch. VII. 



320 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

supposes, the hardships of his working-peoph 
by good tenements, by kindergartens, by factory 
lunch-rooms, by lectures, garden villages, etc., 
etc., etc. — ^he is, as a matter of fact, making his 
working-men feel their dependence, with the re- 
sult that some of the most serious explosions of 
indignation have taken place amid the fairest en- 
vironment that can surround the conditions of 
toil. 

There is another reason for the working-man's 
ingratitude to his employer. Working-men say 
that if corporations can afford these extras, these 
adornments and additions to the comfort of their 
people, then they can afford to give better wages. 
Of the two methods of distributing a surplus, the 
working-man prefers the latter. He would rather 
take his chances in an ordinary factory with 
higher pay and use the addition to his income as 
he pleases. 

In other words, the working-man realizes, or, 
at any rate, asserts, that he himself is paying 
for the improved tenements, for the parks, for 
the libraries, for the comforts and conveniences 
of the superior factories, for kindergartens, for 
lessons in cooking, for lectures, for flower-gar- 
dens, for flower-boxes outside the windows, for 
baths, etc. While he is meeting the cost of these 
advantages, he finds the world at large praising 
his employer as a notable philanthropist, and in 
his heart he regards this as a sham. At all events 
he would rather be his own philanthropist. 



WHAT THE WORKING-MEN WANT 321 

The industrial system that depends, in the 
last resort, upon gratitude, is a psychological 
mistake. Something more dependable than grati- 
tude should prevent strikes and preserve intact 
industrial organization. The bond in economic 
life that holds employer and employee cannot be 
a weak and winged virtue ; it must be something 
reliable and strong. Gratitude cannot be the ce- 
ment between classes in a democracy. 

The Working-man, Whether He Has Reasons 
FOR Gratitude or not, Is Certainly not Loyal 
TO His Employers. 

*'Take any of our great and successful establish- 
ments (says the American Foundry man) and get into 
touch with the management, and you will find the uni- 
versal complaint of the disloyalty of the men. See 
the men, on the other hand, and you will find the 
irritation due to the arbitrary and unjust treatment, 
the existence of conditions repugnant to an independ- 
ent spirit, etc. One need not then wonder why often- 
times the percentage of changes in the shop organiza- 
tion amounts to over one hundred per cent, annually. 
How much greater would have been the success of the 
business pecuniarily, as well as the prosperity of the 
community, had more attention been given to the feel- 
ings of the actual wage-earner. " * 

Many employers do not know how to be em- 
ployers. They may know a trade or a business; 

* Transactions of the American Foundryman's Association, 
p. 197. 



322 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

they may have saved money or get credit; but 
they do not understand business administration. 
Capital and craftsmanship do not make a cap- 
tain of industry. Business administration is an 
art in itself; if it were more generally under- 
stood by employers, there would be less labor 
trouble. 

Loyalty is an old, clan spirit, and attached a 
man to a man of his own blood who was his 
chieftain; it attached the subject to a king as to 
a God-given leader and protector. Industrial 
conditions do not reproduce this relationship. 
The employer and employee do not acknowledge 
identity of interest. They treat each other, on 
the whole, as enemies. Labor is regarded as a 
** commodity" to be purchased by capital. How 
can you expect loyalty from a commodity? 

The Way Out — Self-Goveenment in Industry 

If one listens for any length of time to work- 
ing-men discussing these matters he discovers 
that the way out of the difficulty is not an ^* in- 
soluble conundrum, '^ but a simple and logical 
step. It is nothing less than an application of 
self-government to industry, — the utilization of 
the spirit of independence. 

Democracy, in its principle, accords with the 
modern conception of divine activity, which is a 
working from within, not from without. The old 
idea of God as sovereign, sitting outside of crea- 



WHAT THE WORKING-MEN WANT 323 

tion and ruling it, furnished a prototype for the 
divine authority of kings; in fact, for all arbi- 
trary power. The idea of a god inside the uni- 
verse, ruling through the laws of nature, the 
modern position, is the prototype for self-gov- 
ernment. This centrifugal force is the method 
of democracy — it issues from within the ranks 
of people and not from a privileged position 
outside. 

When an industrial magnate claims to run his 
enterprises by ^* divine right,'' he is logical, for 
our industrialism is still under absolutism and 
has not passed into the democratic or self-gov- 
erning stage. In religion and in politics we have 
largely turned to a theory, and to some extent 
to a practice, where sovereignty operates from 
within rather than from without. Can it be more 
than a matter of time when this philosophy and 
practice shall govern industry? 

Our best educators have given up the effort to 
secure discipline by the exercise of authority 
from above, and are attempting to produce a 
maturer attitude toward conduct on the part 
of their pupils, by leaving discipline more in 
the hands of the students themselves. They 
have met with most encouraging results, and 
student committees manage the morals of 
universities. i 

Thirty years ago the participation by ** Har- 
vard men" in the Republican Presidential Torch- 
Light Procession through the streets of Boston 



324 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

was something of an orgy, ending in a fight. I 
saw the Taft procession. It was like an Anniver- 
sary Day parade of the Brooklyn Sunday Schools. 
I was so astonished that I inquired the reason. 
The whole matter, it seems, had been taken up 
by the class presidents, — students, — ^who put the 
men on their honor, with the sober and well- 
behaved results I beheld. If self-government 
among young, hot-blooded students can do that, 
it can do anything. 

Illustrations of the successful working of the 
principle of self-government in unexpected direc- 
tions are becoming very numerous. The Self- 
Governing Committee under its high-minded and 
able chairman, Richard Welling, has extended the 
method of self-government to the discipline of 
scores of public schools and is in communication 
with hundreds of schools throughout the country 
desiring this method of dealing with school 
discipline. 

*^ Pupil co-operation in the management of 
various vocational activities, as practiced in the 
Gary schools," says Mr. Welling, ^'must also 
tend to breed that community spirit from which 
some day we may hope to see a wise and sane 
collectivism in the state.''* 

At Gary there is a student council through 
which school decisions and matters of discipline 
are registered. The Mutual Welfare League of 

• Proceedings of the National Education Association, Oakland, 
Cal., August, 1915, p. 110. 



WHAT THE WORKING-MEN WANT 325 

Sing Sing Prison, founded by Thomas Mott Os- 
borne, has had a history that will confirm in the 
future self-government as the highest method of 
prison discipline, if prison is looked at as a place 
no longer merely for punishment, but for per- 
sonal regeneration. Even in India, the poet 
Tagore has founded a school with a self- 
governing system based on the George Junior 
Republic. 

The George Junior Republic, and similar 
schemes, undertake to train young hoodlums in 
citizenship, by giving them in a mimic state the 
responsibilities of citizens. Self-government, we 
are having to acknowledge, is being more and 
more regarded not as a begrudged concession, 
but as a moral necessity. 

The extension of self-government to industry 
is logical when we remember that the relation of 
a workman to his work is a moral question and 
depends upon his honesty, honor, and self-respect. 
A workman who makes bad product, or injures 
product, or who turns out less than he is capable 
of, cannot enjoy complete self-respect. A system 
that corrects his disloyalty will add to his man- 
hood as well as to the profits of the business. 

Trade-Unionism No Solution 

The working-man has secured a measure of 
industrial self-government through trade-union- 
ism, which lifts him from the position of abject 



326 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

dependence upon the will of his employer and 
makes collective bargains on a higher level of 
consideration and mutual contract than he could 
make alone. By being a member of a trade- 
union a working-man has something to say about 
the business with which he is connected. In fact, 
he has a great deal to say about the way in which 
the business must treat him. And this participa- 
tion helps to satisfy a workman ^s native in- 
dependence, as well as his love of having a say 
in that which orders his life. But trade-union- 
ism cannot solve the Labor Question; for if it 
were to go to the limit of complete organization 
we should have this picture: On one hand, or- 
ganized capital; on the other hand, organized 
labor — the two related to each other by trade 
agreements or contracts. Can an industrial sys- 
tem be final in a democracy which separates 
citizens, who are supposed to be equal before the 
law and at the polls, into two opposing industrial 
camps ? 

The enlightened effort of the United States 
Steel Company to have its employees buy its 
stock, and so share in its fortunes, is notable and 
points in the right direction. Profit-sharing as an 
industrial cement would seem to be stronger at 
any rate than gratitude; but it cannot take the 
place of industrial self-government or finally be 
a substitute for denied unionism. 



WHAT THE WORKING-MEN WANT 327 

There Are Indications of Further Participa- 
tion BY the Working-people in the Man- 
agement OF Industries in which They Are 
Employed. 

**ln my reorganizing work in factories (says the 
industrial engineer, H. F. J. Porter), I have found 
that where there is a tendency to centralize power in 
a one-man regime the growth of the enterprise is nar- 
rowed to just the scope of that one's capabilities. 
Whereas, if every individual in the organization is given 
the opportunity and the privilege to express his views 
and his reasons for them in matters regarding which 
they may be of value ; if whatever there is good in that 
presented is accepted for what it is worth, then at once 
the management is reinforced by the potential knowl- 
edge possessed by the brains of the whole." 

The advantages of democracy are not to be 
looked for only in those ends that it, in common 
with all government, expects, such as safety and 
justice ; or even in those results in which democ- 
racy may be richer, such as freedom, self-respect, 
and opportunity. The advantages of democracy 
are to be found in its method of operation, 
whereby the citizen, having to assist in the proc- 
ess of government, develops qualities of states- 
manship — judgment, foresight, patience, honesty, 
sympathy — and must, consequently, become a 
more highly organized and experienced personal- 
ity with a more profound social consciousness 
than the average subject of a king. 

A citizen in a republic not only receives a 



328 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

training by the exercise of his franchise that 
adds to his value and fits him to be of more ac- 
count in an industrial organization, but the fur- 
ther development of the .traits he has educated 
at the ballot awaits his industrial independence, 
and, consequently, this independence is some- 
thing he will, in self-defense, more and more 
demand. 

Lyman Abbott claims, with good reason, *Hhat 
when the world learned it could have a state with- 
out a king and a church without a bishop, it had 
taken a long step towards learning that there 
could be a shop without a boss.'* 

I know of factories where a democratic co- 
operation is secured by forming a shop con- 
ference committee made up of the superintendent 
and overseers, who constitute an Upper House, 
and of representatives from each department, 
who constitute a Lower House, Another plan 
that works well and gives a sense of justice is 
to pay employees for suggestions that are found 
useful and not to *^fire" them for troublesome 
complaints. 

** Towering over President and State Gov- 
ernors,'* says James Bryce, in his ^'American 
Commonwealth,** **over Congress and State Leg- 
islatures, over conventions and the vast ma- 
chinery of party, public opinion stands out in the 
United States as the source of power.** 

Public opinion has been an important factor in 
settling strikes and lockouts, where a passive 



WHAT THE WORKING-MEN WANT 329 

and suffering public gave a verdict for one side 
or the other which had weight with the disputants. 
But what a range there is for public opinion 
within the body of workers ! How dominating an 
influence under a democratic organization of in- 
dustry! Suppose there were standards of con- 
duct, workmanship and business dealings, of a 
broader nature than trade-union rules, which 
working-men held each other up to. Even now, 
*^a Union card is a guarantee of workmanship," 
because the unions contain on the whole the best 
workers in a given trade. This field — that of 
public opinion applied to industrial life from the 
inside — remains yet to be capitalized. 

Industeial Helplessness Confeonts Political 
Independence 

The feeling of industrial helplessness, which is 
the incubus upon the spirit of the working-man, 
is contemporaneous with the teachings of inde- 
pendence which proceed from democratic insti- 
tutions and from modern science with its weak- 
ening of traditional authority. 

Others besides the workers see their helpless- 
ness. The Hon. John Bigelow, whose great age, 
adorned with public services, spanned most of 
our national existence, wrote, in 1908, to the 
Governor of New York: 

''With food enough in the United States to nourish 
twice its population, the average wage-earner can lay 



330 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

up nothing, can provide few privileges, and practically 
no recreation." 



How different were the hopes of our young 
Republic from what has come to pass! The ex- 
pectations of the visionaries of the first half- 
century were well set forth by William Ellery 
Channing, in his lecture on *^ Self -Culture,'' de- 
livered in Boston in 1838. ^^The grand distinc- 
tion of the times is the emerging of the people 
from brutal degradation, the gradual recognition 
of their rights, the gradual diffusion among them 
of the means of improvement and happiness, 
the creation of a new power in the state — the 
power of the people.'' 

Mr. Roosevelt, addressing the Alumni of Har- 
vard College, at Cambridge, in June, 1910, con- 
fessed that our democracy had not met the ex- 
pectation of its well-wishers. ^^I found every- 
where (in Europe) a certain disheartened sense 
that we had not come up to our ideals as there 
was ground for believing that we ought to have 
come ; that we had not achieved them as we ought 
to have achieved them; and every instance of 
corruption, of demagogy, of the unjust abuse of 
wealth, the unjust use of wealth to the detriment 
of the public, or the improper acceptance by the 
public that mere wealth in and of itself con- 
stituted a claim to regard in the community, 
every instance of brutal materialism on our part, 
every time that it was made evident that the at- 



WHAT THE WORKING-MEN WANT 331 

titude of this country was such as ought not to 
be the attitude of a democracy founded on the 
principles upon which ours was founded — every 
such instance served to dim the ideal that the 
name America conjured up in the minds of those 
in foreign lands." 

Democracy Getting Its Second Wind 

A great deal of what we call socialism is only 
democracy getting its second wind. Disappoint- 
ment at the results of political democracy was 
inevitable. The modern experiment of popular 
government, it must be remembered, has been 
contemporaneous with revolutionary discoveries 
and inventions, associated with steam and elec- 
tricity, which, by making it possible for a single 
engine to run thousands of machines, have en- 
couraged concentration of capital and of labor. 
The kit of tools of the old-fashioned workman is 
now a curiosity ; our skilled workmen are depend- 
ent upon access to machinery owned capital- 
istically. Political independence and industrial 
dependence cannot live permanently together. 
The same man cannot represent both without 
complaint and confusion. The same country can- 
not contain both without disrupting ebullitions.* 

Wonderful things have happened in our 
time even before the war. Belief was gaining 
ground that destitution could be abolished, and 

* Consult Chapter II. 



332 FAIR PLAY FOR THE WORKERS 

that this Utopia awaits only a richer justice ; that 
if men will be more brotherly the old earth will 
be nearer heaven.* This new religion took pos- 
session of millions, some of whom called them- 
selves atheists. The working-people of many 
lands were reaching an understanding among 
themselves and were banded together in an op- 
timism of outlook, a joyousness of spirit and a 
self-sacrificing compact, such as in the past have 
only illuminated periods of religious exaltation. 
The lowly man no longer felt lonely. The doubter 
no longer was worried by dogma. Within life 
itself were found fertile grounds of faith, unfa- 
miliar but far-reaching fellowship. The world 
was never so friendly an abode for the human 
spirit as just before the war. The Hebrew on the 
eve of the Messianic coming; the Southern slave 
on the threshold of emancipation ; the crusader in 
sight of the Holy Sepulchre — must have had the 
exultant expectations, the * ^thrills,'' as we say, 
that a glimpse of industrial brotherhood was giv- 
ing millions of wage-earners. This elation of a 
new human enthusiasm the war cruelly checked, 
but has not destroyed. Liberated from a flood of 
war hatred, freed from the suppression of autoc- 
racy, it is rising anew into a purified democratic 
ideal, — a clearer demand for industrial brother- 
hood which shall be world-wide. 

** Released from monastic and oppressive regu- 
lation, from the hurt of body and imprisonment 

•See J. H. Hollander, "Abolition of Poverty," 1914. 



WHAT THE WORKING-MEN WANT 333 

of mind, the people of the Renaissance,*' says 
Professor Rudolf Eucken, ** burst forth into free- 
dom of classical speculation and gained cheer, en- 
thusiasm, power." 

Why have our masses not the joy and enthusi- 
asms of the people of the Renaissance? Mod- 
ern life has come into new freedom and self- 
confidence — the liberation of science and wealth — 
but only partially distributed. The freedom and 
the exhilaration that the working-people of the 
Renaissance enjoyed, helped by the guilds and a 
more homogeneous economic system, our work- 
ing-people have missed through industrial help- 
lessness. They have been confused and depressed 
by a citizenship which disappointed their hopes 
and did not in reality bestow the lost industrial 
status. This is a serious loss, not only because 
a great epoch has dawned upon a divided civiliza- 
tion — one practically engaged in civil war — but 
because the majority of the people, by reason of 
their industrial helplessness, are not in a posi- 
tion to join the privileged few in using the mod- 
ern enlightenment for the good of all, in greater 
discoveries, arts, letters, and relationships. We 
are all losers if we permit any class to lack free- 
dom and self-confidence. We are only completely 
gainers, by the special enfranchisements of our 
time, when all classes work together for discov- 
ery, for increase of wealth, for the spread of ma- 
terial benefits, and for the highest individual and 
social development. 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX 



PAGE 

Notes on Economic Waste, Chapter VII. 

Immediate References 337 

General References 340 

Physical Training Act — State of New York. 

Scope of Physical Training from General Plan and Syllabus. 
Published January 15, 1917, pp. 27-28-29 . . . .341 

Requirements of Physical Training 343 

Organization of the I. W. W ., . • 344 

Labor. 

Labor Laws in War Time 347 

Trade Union Official Journals ...,,.,. 352 

Bibliography 363 



IMMEDIATE REFERENCES 

ECONOMIC WASTE IN THE UNITED STATES AND ITS 
SIGNIFICANCE 

Extent of Our Economic Waste 

1. Waste through Carelessness and Ignorance 
Natural Resources 

Soil erosion $50,000,000 

Koester, " Our Stupendous Yearly Waste," 

World's Work, March, 1912. 
Floods and freshets 238,000,000 

Koester, " Our Stupendous Yearly Waste," 

World's Work, March, 1912. 
Non-use of water power 600,000,000 

Koester, " Our Stupendous Yearly Waste," 

World's Work, March, 1912. 
Poor Method 

Lumbering, waste of by-product 300,000,000 

Agricultural Department, Bureau of 

Chemistry, quoted from N. Y. Globe, 

2-28-13. 
Mining, waste of by-product 65,000,000 

Koester, " Our Stupendous Yearly Waste," 

World's Work, March, 1912. 
337 



338 APPENDIX 

Poor Method (Cont.) 

Fuel $774,000 

Reginald Pelham Bolton, Pres. Amer. Sec. 

Heating and Ventilating Engineers, quoted 

from N. Y. Evening Post, 1-23-12. 

Fire losses 235,000,000 

Cost of insurance 250,000,000 

Fire prevention 450,000,000 

Koester, " Our Stupendous Yearly Waste," 

World's Work, March, 1912. " City Life," 

N. Y., 5-11-11. 
Forest fires 50,000,000 

Koester, " Our Stupendous Yearly Waste," 

World's Work, March, 1912. 
In smoke, by poor stoking 600,000,000 

H. M. Wilson, chief engineer in one branch 

of U. S. Geological Survey. 

"Gas 45,000,000 

Inefficiency in national, state, municipal 

work 300,000,000 

Preventable Diseases of Livestock 93,000,000 

Koester, " Our Stupendous Yearly Waste," 

World's Work, March, 1912. 
Insect and Animal Pests 
' Eats 100,000,000 

Koester, " Our Stupendous Yearly Waste," 

World's Work, March, 1912. 
Rodents (exclusive of rats) 110,236,000 

N. Y. Times, 6-26-10. 

Insects 420,000,000 

U. S. Dept. of Agriculture. Yearbook 

( 1904 ) . Note : Another estimate is $700,- 

000,000. 

2. Waste through Faulty Economics 
Transportation Losses 

Railroad mismanagement 600,000,000 

Koester, " Our Stupendous Yearly Waste," 

World's Work, March, 1912. 
Transportation accidents 25,000,000 

Koester, " Our Stupendous Yearly Waste," 

World's Work, March, 1912. 
Careless handling of fish, eggs, fruit 40,000,000 

Dr. Mary E. Pennington, chemist in U. S. 

Dept. Bacteriology at Philadelphia. Also 

Koester, " Our Stupendous Yearly Waste," 

World's Work, March, 1912. 
Decay and loss in transit 1,000,500,000 

B. F. Yoakum, of New York, Chairman of 

Board of Directors, Frisco Lines. 



1 



APPENDIX 339 

Labor Maladjustments 

Occupational diseases $1,000,000,000 

Frederick Hoffman, statistician of the 
Prudential Insurance Co., Newark, N. J. 

Industrial accidents 13,000,000 

Koester, " Our Stupendous Yearly Waste," 
World's Work, March, 1912. 

Unemployment 3,500,000,000 

N. J. Stone. 

Strikes and lockouts 1,000,000,000 

John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in " Personal 
Relation in Industry," quoting Frank A. 
Vanderlip. 

Domestic inefficiency 300,000,000 

Mrs. Christine Frederick. 
3. Social Waste 

Personal Extravagance 

Cheap shows 60,000,000 

" World's Missionary Signs of the Times." 
"Greater N. Y. Special." 

Tobacco 825,000,000 

Chart, P. E. Domestic and Foreign Mis- 
sionary Society. 

Alcohol 1,600,000,000 

William B. Bailey, Ph.D., Asst. Prof. Pol. 
Econ., Yale. Independent, 3-28-12. 

Chewing gum 15,000,000 

" World's Missionary Signs of the Times." 

Drugs 27,500,000 

" World's Missionary Signs of the Times." 

Patent medicines 75,476,032 

" World's Missionary Signs of the Times." 

Soft drinks 107,536,000 

" World's Missionary Signs of the Times." 

Confectionery 178,000,000 

Defective Classes 

Backward pupils 26,000,000 

Leonard P. Ayres, manager of Russell Sage 
Foundation's investigation of backward 
children. " Psychological Clinic," Vol. Ill, 
pp. 49-57 (1909-10). 

Feeble-minded 85,000,000 

Edwin Bjorkman, " The Unnecessary Cost 
of Sickness," World's Work 18: 1134-43 
(July, 1909) . Note: The figure here given 
includes care of insane. Is evidently too 
small for both. 

Insane 135,000,000 

Clifford B. Beers, Sec'y Nat'l Com. for 
Mental Hygiene, quoted from Times 3-15-13. 



340 APPENDIX 

Disease 

Preventable disease $1,000,000,000 

Committee of One Hundred on National 

Health. 

Death of children 2,627,300,000 

Illiteracy 1,500,000,000 

N. J. Stone. 
Homicide and 8uicide (about 20,000 at $2,000 

each) 40,000,000 

GENERAL REFERENCES ON ECONOMIC WASTE 

Abolition of poverty. 

J. H. Hollander. Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1914. (Hough- 
ton, Mifflin Co.) 
Conservation of national resources. 

Am. Soc. of Civil Eng. 1910. Te. p. v. 40 No. 3. 
Conservation of national resources of the U. S. 

C. R. Van Hise, Univ. of Wisconsin. (Macmillan Co., 1910.) 
Conservation and research: economies secured by scientific inves- 
tigation. 

H. T. Kalmus. Sci. Am. 75. S. 114-5. Feb. 22, '13. 
Conserving waste. 

Scientific American. 110:308. April 11, '14. 
Distribution of incomes in the U. S. (1912). 

F. H. Streighthoff. Columbia University study. 
Economic possibilities of conservation. 

I. J. Econ. 27: 497-519. May, '13. 
Estimated valuation of national wealth; 1850-1912. 

Dept. of commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1915. 
Expenditures of the poor. 

Mrs. W. E. Gallaher, Conf. Char, and Corrections, 1912, 118-21. 
Fight for the nation. 

Outlook 105: 692-4. Nov. 29, '13. 
Food from waste products. 

Literary Digest 46: 15-6. Jan. 4, 1913. 
For a reawakened conservation. 

World's Work 25: 246-9. Jan. 2, '13. 
Gathering up the fragments. 

L. E. Theiss. Outlook 109 : 46-9. Jan. 6, '15. 
How to get something by giving something up. 

S. Strunsky. Cent. 86: 153-4. May, '13. 
Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. 

Study of sickness in Boston. Lee K. Franklin; Louis N. Dublin. 
National Conservation Commission Report, Vol. III. 

Govt. Ptg. Office, 1909, Doc. 676, 60th Cong., 2d Sess. 
National waste, particularly as related to wants of poor. 
Our great national waste. 

F. M. Turner, Jr. Conad. M. 46: 1-8, 170-6. 
Periodical Literature. 



APPENDIX 341 

Popular control of national wealth. 

O. C. Barber. Outlook 104: 613-23, July 19, 1913. 
Recoverable values of municipal waste. 

Amer. Journal of Public Health, Boston, 1914, V. 4, p. 575-578. 
Redistribution of mankind. 

H. N. Dickson, Smithsonian Report, 1913. 553-69. 
Reducing our waste to eggs. 

Scientific American suppl., May, '16. V. 81, p. 292-293. 
Report on national vitality. 

Irving Fisher. N. C. C. Vol. 3. 
Some of the fruits of necessity. 

Sci. Am. 115: 275. Sept. 23, '16. 
Teaching thrift thru trash. 

Survey 36: 437. July 22, '16. 
U. S. Census Office. 12 census, vol. 10: Manufactures pt. 4 pp. 

723-748. 
Utilization of wastes and by-products in manufactures (espe- 
cially 1890-1900). 
Values from city garbage. 

C. O. Bartlett. Eng. M. 47 : 276-8. May, '14. 
Waste. 

Atlan. 115: 572-5. Ap. '15. 

M. N. Watson; J. Home Econ., 7: 109-14. March, '15. 
Wastes in the kitchen. 

S. T. Rorer. Good H. 58: 708-10. May, '14. 
Waste trade journal. 
Water conservation, fisheries and food supply. 

R. E. Cooper. Pop. Sci. 87: 90-9. July, '15. 
Wealth and income of the people of the U. S. 

W. I. King (1915). 
Wealth from wasted gas. 

C. Lawrence. Tech. World. 19:37-8. March, '13. 
Wealth from the world's waste. 

Bookkeeper, Detroit, 1909. Pol. 22, p. 91-94. 
When our resources are gone. 

Ind. 74: 555-6. March 13, '13. 
Where they won't conserve. 

G. F. Stratton. Tech. World. 18: 557-8. Jan, '13. 
Whole loaf — or five per cent. 

W. V. Woehlke. Sunset 33: 158-9. July, '14. 



342 APPENDIX 



AN ACT 

To Amend the Militaby Law, Relative to MttiTAEY and Dis- 
ciplinary Training. 

The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate <md 
Assembly , do enact as follows: 

Section 1. Section twenty-seven of chapter forty-one of the laws 
of nineteen hundred and nine, entitled " An act in relation to the 
militia, constituting chapter thirty-six of the consolidated laws," 
as added by chapter five hundred and sixty-six of the laws of 
nineteen hundred and sixteen, is hereby amended to read as 
follows : 

§27. Physical and disciplinary training in schools; military 
training. ( 1 ) The military training commission shall advise and 
confer with the board of regents of the university of the state of 
New York as to the courses of instruction in physical training 
to be prescribed for elementary and secondary schools as provided 
in the education law. 

In order to more thoroughly and comprehensively prepare the 
boys of the elementary amd secondary schools for the duties and 
obligations of citizenship, it shall also be the duty of the military 
training commission to recommend from time to time to the board 
of regents the establishment in such schools, cff habits, customs 
and methods best adapted to develop correct physical posture and 
bearing, mental and physical alertness, self-control, disciplined 
initiative, sense of duty and the spirit of co-operation under 
leadership. 

(2) After the first day of September, nineteen hundred and 
sixteen, all boys above the age of sixteen years and not over the 
age of nineteen years, except boys exempted by the commission, 
shall be given such military training as the commission may pre- 
scribe for periods aggregating not more than three hours in each 
week [during the school or college year, in the case of boys who 
are pupils in public or private schools or colleges, and for periods 
not exceeding those above stated] between September first of each 
year and the fifteenth day of June next ensuing [in the case of 
boys who are not pupils; but any boy who is regularly and law- 
fully employed in any occupation for a livelihood shall not be 
required to take such training unless he volunteers and is accepted 
therefor]. Such training periods, in the case of pupils in [such] 
schools and colleges, shall be in addition to prescribed periods of 



Explanation— Matter in italics is new; Matter in brackets [ J is old law to be 
admitted. 



APPENDIX 343 

other instruction therein and outside the time assigned therefor. 
Such training shall be conducted under the supervision of the mili- 
tary training commission by such male teachers and physical in- 
structors of schools and colleges as may be assigned by the boards 
of education or trustees of such schools or governing bodies of such 
colleges and accepted by the commission, and by officers and 
enlisted men of the national guard and naval militia detailed for 
that purpose by the major general commanding the national 
guard or such officer and enlisted men of the United States army 
as may be available. The officers and enlisted men of the national 
guard and naval militia so detailed shall, while in the actual per- 
formance of the duties of the detail, receive such percentage of 
the pay authorized by this chapter for officers and enlisted men 
of the national guard and naval militia of their respective grades 
and length of service as may from time to time be fixed by the 
commission. Teachers and instructors assigned from schools and 
colleges shall be paid such compensation as the commission may 
determine out of moneys appropriated for carrying out the pro- 
visions of this article. 

Such requirement as to military training, herein prescribed, 
may in the discretion of the commission he met in part hy such 
vocational training or vocational experience as will, in the opinion 
of the commission, specifically prepare hoys of the ages named for 
service useful to the state, in the maintenance of defense, in the 
promotion of puhlic safety, in the conservation and development 
of the state's resources, or in the construction and maintenance of 
puhlic improvements. 

§ 2. This act shall take effect immediately. 



EEQUIREMENTS OF PHYSICAL TRAINING 

For elementary and secondary schools: 

1. Physical training A: correlation with school medical inspec- 

tion, daily class inspection by regular class teacher. 

2. Physical training B: a setting-up drill of at least two 

minutes' duration at the beginning of each class period, 
or at least four times every school day, directed by regu- 
lar class teacher. 

3. Physical training C: talks on hygiene, two ten-minute or 

fifteen-minute periods a week, under regular class teacher 
or a teacher especially assigned to this work (to go into 
effect Sept., 1917). 

4. Physical training D : supervised recreation. 

a. Immediate requirement: (physical training 3 may be 

substituted) sixty minutes each week, under the 
regular class teacher, or special teacher, or both. 

b. Recreational requirement, to go into effect not later than 

Sept., 1917. 
( 1 ) For schools with adequate equipment, a minimum 
of four hours a week, at least one of which must 



344 APPENDIX 

be under the direct supervision of the regular 
school officials; the other three hours may be 
satisfied by equivalents accepted by the school 
from the home or community activities of the 
child. 
(2) For schools without adequate equipment for super- 
vised recreation, a minimum of three hours a 
week will be required, all of which may be cov- 
ered by equivalents accepted from the home or 
community activities of the child. This require- 
ment must not be regarded as permanent or 
satisfactory. All schools should eventually 
make provision for meeting the requirement as 
outlined in paragraph 
5. Physical training E: gymnastic drills, sixty minutes a week 
under special teacher of physical training. 

a. Immediate requirement — may substitute the immediate 

requirement in physical training D (supervised re- 
creation ) , sixty minutes a week, for this requirement 
in gymnastic drills. 

b. Requirement to go into effect not later than September, 

1917. All schools in which there is adequate space 
and equipment for gymnastic activities will provide 
a minimum of sixty minutes each week distributed 
into at least two periods a week. 



ORGANIZATION OP THE I. W. W. 

We quote the following from a pamphlet printed by the 
I. W. W. Publishing Bureau of Cleveland, "The I. W. W., Its 
History, Structure and Methods," by Vincent St. John, who is, at 
present, general secretary of the organization : 

General Outline 

1. The unit of organization is the Local Industrial Union. The 
local industrial union embraces all of the workers of a given 
industry in a given city, town or district. 

2., All local industrial unions of the same industry are combined 
into a National Industrial Union with jurisdiction over the entire 
industry. 

3. National industrial unions of closely allied industries are 
combined into Departmental Organizations. For example, all 
national industrial unions engaged in the production of Food 
Products and in handling them would be combined into the Depart- 
ment of Food Products. Steam, Air, Water and Land national 
divisions of the Transportation Industry, form the Transportation 
Department. 

4. The Industrial Departments are combined into the General 
Organization, which in turn is to be an integral part of a like 



APPENDIX 345 

International Organization; and through the international organi- 
zation establish solidarity and co-operation between the workers 
of all countries. 

Subdivisions 

Taking into consideration the technical differences that exist 
within the different departments of the industries, and the needs 
where large numbers of workers are employed, the local industrial 
union is branched to meet these requirements. 

1. Language branches, so that the workers can conduct the 
affairs of the organization in the language they are familiar with. 

2. Shop branches, so that the workers of each shop control the 
conditions that directly affect them. 

3. Department branches in large industries, to simplify and 
systematize the business of the organization. 

4. District branches, to enable members to attend meetings of 
the union without having to travel too great a distance. These 
branches are only necessary in the large cities and big industries 
where the industry covers large areas. 

5. District Councils, in order that every given industrial dis- 
trict shall have complete industrial solidarity among the workers 
of each industry. The Industrial District Council combines all 
the local industrial unions of the district. Through it concerted 
action is maintained for its district. 

Functions of Branches 

Branches of an industrial local deal with the employer only 
through the Industrial Union. Thus, while the workers in each 
branch determine the conditions that directly affect them, they act 
in concert with all the workers through the industrial union. 

As the knowledge of the English language becomes more gen- 
eral, the language branches will disappear. 

The development of machine production will also gradually 
eliminate the branches based on technical knowledge, or skill. 

The constant development and concentration of the ownership 
and control of industry will be met by a like concentration of the 
number of industrial unions and industrial departments. It is 
meant that the organization at all times shall conform to the 
needs of the hour and eventually furnish the union through 
which and by which the organized workers will be able to 
determine the amount of food, clothing, shelter, education and 
amusement necessary to satisfy the wants of the workers. 

Administration of the Organization 

Local unions have full charge of all their local affairs; elect 
their own officers; determine their pay; and also the amount of 
dues collected by the local from the membership. The general 



346 APPENDIX 

organization, however, does not allow any local to charge over 
$1.00 per month dues or $5.00 initiation fee. 

Each branch of a local industrial union elects a delegate or 
delegates to the central committee of the local industrial union. 
This central committee is the administrative body of the local 
industrial union. Officers of the branches consist of secretary, 
ireasurer, chairman and trustees. 

Officers of the local industrial union consist of secretary and 
treasurer, chairman and trustees. 

Each local industrial union within a given district elects a 
delegate or delegates to the district council. The district council 
has as officers a secretary-treasurer and trustees. The officers of 
the district council are elected by the delegates thereof. 

All officers in local bodies are elected by referendum vote of all 
the membership involved, except those of the district council. 

Proportional representation does not prevail in the delegation of 
the branches and to district councils. Each branch and local has 
the same number of delegates. Each delegate casts one vote. 

National industrial unions hold annual conventions. Dele- 
gates from each local of the national union cast a vote based 
upon the membership of the local that they represent. 

The national industrial union nominates the candidates for 
officers at the convention, and the three nominees receiving the 
highest votes at the convention are sent to all the membership to 
be voted upon in selecting the officers. 

The officers of the national unions consist of secretary and 
treasurer, and executive board. Each national union elects dele- 
gates to the department to which it belongs. The same procedure 
is followed in electing delegates as in electing officers. 

Industrial departments hold conventions and nominate the 
delegates that are elected to the general convention. Delegates 
to the general convention nominate candidates for the offices of the 
general organization which are a General Secretary-Treasurer, 
and a General Organizer, These general officers are elected by the 
vote of the entire organization. 

The General Executive Board is composed of one member from 
each Industrial Department and is selected by the membership of 
the department. 

General conventions are held annually at present. 

The rule in determining the wages of the officers of all parts 
of the organization is, to pay the officers who are needed approxi- 
mately the same wages they would receive when employed in the 
industry in which they work. The wages of the general secretary 
and the general organizer are each $90.00 per month. 



^ APPENDIX 347 

LABOR LAWS IN WAR TIME 

Number 1 — Special Bulletin — April, 1917 

The American Association for Labor Legislation, 131 East 23rd 
Street, New York City 

CONSERVE .OUR INDUSTRIAL ARMY 
Production Must Be Increased 

With the beginning of war, the problem of national effectiveness 
looms big. Preparedness efforts are redoubled. Indications al- 
ready appear that Men may be sacrificed to Materials in the 
erroneous belief that unrestricted endeavor increases output. 
There is danger that over-zeal may lead to the breaking down of 
protective standards and hence of the health and unproductive- 
ness of labor. Great Britain made this mistake at the outset of 
war ; but has recognized what it means, and has set about re- 
establishing proper standards. If conservation of the working 
population is sound policy to meet the demands of peace, then 
it is an imperative duty in meeting the acute strain of war. 

On March 23, 1917, the Executive Committee of the Association 
for Labor Legislation issued a public announcement of its attitude 
toward standards of legal protection for workers in time of war. 
This statement is embodied in the following resolution: 

Whereas, The entrance of the United States into the World 
War appears imminent; and 

Whereas, Other countries upon engaging in the conflict per- 
mitted a serious breakdown of protective labor regulations with 
the result, as shown by recent official investigations, of early and 
unmistakable loss of health, output and national effectiveness ; and 

Whereas, Our own experience has already demonstrated that 
accidents increase with speeding up and the employment of new 
workers unaccustomed to their tasks, that over-fatigue defeats the 
object aimed at in lengthening working hours, and that new occu- 
pational poisoning has accompanied the recent development of 
munition manufacture; and 

Whereas, The full strength of our nation is needed as never 
before and we cannot afford to suffer loss of labor power through 
accidents, disease, industrial poisoning and over-fatigue; now, 
therefore, be it 

Resolved, That the American Association for Labor Legislation, 
at this critical time, in order to promote the success of our country 
in war as well as in peace, would sound a warning against the 
shortsightedness and laxness at first exemplified abroad in these 
matters, and would urge all public-spirited citizens to co-operate 
in maintaining, for the protection of those who serve in this time 



348 APPENDIX 

of stress the industries of the nation, (who as experience abroad 
has shown are quite as important to military success as the fight- 
ing forces ) , the following essential minimum requirements : 

/. Safety 
1. Maintenance of all existing standards of safeguarding ma- 
chinery and industrial processes for the prevention of accidents. 

//. Sanitation 

1. Maintenance of all existing measures for the prevention of 
occupational diseases. 

2. Immediate agreement upon practicable methods for the pre- 
vention of special occupational poisonings incident to making and 
handling explosives. 

///. Hours 

1. Three-shift system in continuous industries. 

2. In non-continuous industries, maintenance of existing stand- 
ard working day as basic. 

3. One day's rest in seven for all workers. 

IV. Wages 

1. Equal pay for equal work, without discrimination as to sex. 

2. Maintenance of existing wage rates for basic working day. 

3. Time and one-half for all hours beyond basic working day. 

4. Wage rates to be periodically revised to correspond with 
variations in the cost of living. 

V. Child Labor 

1. Maintenance of all existing special regulations regarding 
child labor, including minimum wages, maximum hours, prohibi- 
tion of night work, prohibited employment, and employment cer- 
tificates. 

2. Determination of specially hazardous employments to be for- 
bidden to children under sixteen. 

VI. Woman's Work 
1. Maintenance of existing special regulations regarding 
woman's work, including maximum hours, prohibition of night 
work, prohibited hazardous employments, and prohibited employ- 
ment immediately before and after childbirth. 

VII. Social Insurance 

1. Maintenance of existing standards of workmen's compensa- 
tion for industrial accidents and diseases. 

2. Extension of workmen's compensation laws to embrace occu- 
pational diseases, especially those particularly incident to the 
manufacture and handling of explosives. 



APPENDIX 349 

3. Immediate investigation of the sickness problem among the 
workers to ascertain the advisability of establishing universal 
workmen's health insurance. 

VIII. Labor Market 
1. Extension of existing systems of public employment bureaus 
to aid in the intelligent distribution of labor throughout the 
country. 

IX. Administration of Labor Laws 

1. Increased appropriations for enlarged staffs of inspectors 
to enforce labor legislation. 

2. Representation of employees, employers, and the public on 
joint councils for co-operating with the labor departments in 
drafting and enforcing necessary regulations to put the foregoing 
principles into full effect. 



GREAT BRITAIN'S EXPERIENCE 
Damaging Effect of Relaxed Standards 

England has found that national strength in war requires the 
rigid maintenance of protective standards for those who serve in 
the industries. 

When the war began, working hours were lengthened in the 
munition factories of Great Britain, and the legal restrictions on 
women's hours were relaxed. This was done on the false supposi- 
tion that production would be increased. 

Then followed complaints of lost time and failure to maintain 
output, and of the " sweating " of workers. This situation led 
to the appointment by the Minister of Munitions of a Health of 
Munition Workers Committee " to consider and advise on questions 
of industrial fatigue, the physical health and physical eflficiency of 
workers in munition factories and workshops." 

This Committee, in a series of reports, demonstrated that from 
the point of view of maximum production alone, excessive hours 
did not pay; and that the eflBciency of workers had been lowered 
by overwork. 

That the nation cannot afford to continue the shortsighted 
policy of over-taxing its munition workers was the Committee's 
conclusion. 

"Misguided efforts to stimulate workers to feverish activity," 
reports the Committee, " are likely to be as damaging to the 
desired result as the cheers of partisans would be, if they encour- 
aged a long-distance runner to a futile sprint early in his race. 
... In war time the workmen will be willing, as they are showing 
in so many directions, to forego comfort and to work nearer the 
margin of accumulating fatigue than in time of peace, but the 
country cannot afford the extravagance of paying for work done 



350 APPENDIX 

during incapacity from fatigue just because so many hours are 
spent upon it, or the further extravagance of urging armies of 
workmen toward relative incapacity by neglect of physiological 
law. . . . Taking the country as a whole, the Committee are 
bound to record their impression that the munition workers in 
general have been allowed to reach a state of reduced efficiency 
and lowered health which might have been avoided without the 
reduction of output by attention to the details of daily and 
weekly rest." 

Evidence convinced the Committee that seven-day work is a mis- 
taken procedure with any class of workers. 

"Habm to Body and Mind" 

Urging that proper restrictions for women workers are needed, 
the Committee reports : " Conditions of work are accepted without 
question and without complaint which, immediately detrimental to 
output, would, if continued, be ultimately disastrous to health. It 
is for the nation to safeguard the devotion of its workers by its 
foresight and watchfulness lest irreparable harm be done to body 
and mind both in this generation and the next." 

Measures to secure good sanitary conditions, lighting, ventila- 
tion, and the prevention of industrial accidents and diseases, are 
likewise essential to maintain efficiency, the Committee finds. 

According to Mr. P. Sargant Florence of the British Association 
for the Advancement of Science, the conclusions of the Committee 
have resulted in a tendency to reduce hours, in the general 
abandonment of Simday work, in some substitution of eight for 
twelve-hour shifts in continuous industries, and in improved provi- 
sions for health, comfort and safety. In the opinion of Mr. Flor- 
ence, " the nation's needs would have been better served in the 
long run, even from the point of view of maximum output alone, 
if pre-war standards and restrictions had been observed without 
change.'* 

This illuminating testimony from the practical experience of 
a nation that has been organizing all of its resources, so as 
most eflFectively to meet the ordeal of war, offers a timely lesson 
to the United States. 



AN AMERICAN DANGER 
Letting Down the Bars 

War orders in the United States since 1914 have been followed 
by indications of the same industrial policy that the British 
government found to be mistaken and detrimental to military 
efficiency. 

In American munition plants, hastily erected or expanded to 
meet the heavy demands, workers have been rushed without ade- 



APPENDIX 351 

quate restrictions on hours or suflficient protection against the 
hazards of accident and disease. 

Investigation of conditions under which war supplies have been 
manufactured in this country shows a breaking down of restrictive 
standards. 

Women Wobkers Threatened 

Women are particularly affected. It has been found that in 
order to meet the demand of speed and a large output of muni- 
tions, women have been working long hours and at night; and 
that they have been put to work near or with explosives in ways 
which sometimes mean accident, industrial poisoning, or other 
illness. 

An extensive study of this problem in ten states, including 
almost all the munition factories, was made for the United States 
Bureau of Labor Statistics by Dr. Alice Hamilton. She reports: 
" Everything that was needed for rapid production was pushed; 
and everything that was needed for the protection of the workers 
was postponed." 

This backward tendency is not confined to munition plants. 
It has been manifested in other connections. For instance, on 
March 23, 1917, the New York State Industrial Commission ex- 
empted the Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Corporation from the one- 
day-rest-in-seven law, and permitted it to " work such men as are 
exclusively engaged in the manufacture of aeroplanes and aero- 
plane motors seven days a week, and as many hours as the 
employees wish for a period of six months." 

Any legal exemptions granted for extraordinary emergencies 
should be only for the briefest possible period and with conditions 
stated in specific form. They should be issued only after official 
investigation, due notice, and public hearing. 

A bill was introduced in the New York legislature in March, 
1917, to exclude from the protective provisions of the labor law 
with regard to working hours all women and minors over the age 
of sixteen who are " engaged in the manufacture of military sup- 
plies of any sort for the United States or any state." That bill, 
if adopted, would have opened the way for the unrestricted labor 
of women and children over sixteen. There are indications that 
similar measures dangerous to the effectiveness of America's in- 
dustrial mobilization are contemplated elsewhere. 

LABOR'S ATTITUDE IN AMERICA TOWARD THE WAR 

Pledge Given to Nation by American Federation of Labor 

The International Socialist Review, April, 1917, page 618. 

We, the officers of the national and internationl trades 
unions of America in national conference assembled, in the capital 
of our nation, hereby pledge ourselves in peace or in war, in 
stress or in storm, to stand unreservedly by the standards of 



352 APPENDIX 

liberty and the safety and preservation of the institutions and 
ideals of our republic. 

In this solemn hour of our nation's life, it is our earnest hope 
that our republic may be safeguarded in its unswerving desire 
for peace that our people may be spared the horrors and the 
burdens of war; that they may have the opportunity to cultivate 
and develop the arts of peace, human brotherhood and a higher 
civilization. 

But despite all our endeavors and hopes, should our country be 
drawn into the maelstrom of the European conflict, we, with these 
ideals of liberty and justice herein declared, as the indispensable 
basis for national policies, ofi'er our services to our country in 
every field of activity to defend, safeguard and preserve the 
republic of the United States of America against its enemies, 
whomsoever they may be, and we call upon our fellow workers 
and fellow citizens in the holy name of labor, justice, freedom 
and humanity to devoutly and patriotically give like service. 

A Declaration by the Industrial Workers of the World 

We, the Industrial Workers of the World, in convention assem- 
bled, hereby reaffirm our adherence to the principles of Industrial 
Unionism, and rededicate ourselves to the unflinching prosecu- 
tion of the struggle for the abolition of wage slavery, and the 
realization of our ideals in Industrial Democracy. 

With the European war for conquest and exploitation raging 
and destroying the lives, class consciousness and unity of the 
workers, and the ever growing agitation for military prepared- 
ness clouding the main issues, and delaying the realization of 
our ultimate aim with patriotic, and, therefore, capitalistic 
aspirations, we openly declare ourselves determined opponents 
of all nationalistic sectionalism or patriotism, and the militarism 
preached and supported by our enemy, the Capitalist Class. 
We condemn all wars, and, for the prevention of such, we 
proclaim the anti-militarist propaganda in time of peace, thus 
promoting class solidarity among the workers of the entire 
world, and, in time of war, the general strike in all industries. 

We extend assurances of both moral and material support to 
all the workers who suffer at the hands of the Capitalist Class 
for their adhesion to their principles, and call on all workers 
to unite themselves with us, that the reign of the exploiters 
may cease and this earth be made fair through the establish- 
ment of the Industrial Democracy. 

OFFICIAL JOURNALS OP INTERNATIONAL 
UNIONS 

B 
Bakers' Journal — 

212 Bush Temple of Music, Chicago, IlL 
Barbers' Journal — 

222 East Michigan street, Indianapolis, Ind. 



APPENDIX 353 

Blacksmiths' Journal — 

1270-85 Monon building, Chicago, 111. 
Boilermakers' Journal — 

Law building, Kansas City, Kans. 
Bookbinder, The International — 

222 East Michigan street, Indianapolis, Ind. 
Brauerei Arbeiter Zeitung (Brewery Workers) — 

2347-51 Vine street, Cincinnati, Ohio. 
Bricklayer, Mason and Plasterer — 

University Park building, Indianapolis, Ind. 
Bridgemen's Magazine — 

American Central Life building, Indianapolis, Ind. 
Broom Maker — 

851 King place, Chicago. 
Buchdrucker Zeitung (German Typographical) — 

Newton Claypool building, Indianapolis, Ind. 
Butcher Workman — 

212 May avenue, Syracuse, N. Y. 

C 

Carpenter, The — 

Carpenter's building, Indianapolis, Ind. 
Cigarmakers' Journal — 

Monon building, Chicago, 111. 
Cloth Hat, Cap and Millinery Workers' Journal — 

62 East Fourth street. New York, N. Y. 
Commercial Telegraphers' Journal — 

Transportation building, Chicago, 111. 
Coopers' Journal — 

Bishop building, Kansas City, Kans. 

E 

Electrical Worker — 

Eeisch building, Springfield, 111. 
Elevator Constructor — 

Sixteenth and Chestnut streets, Philadelphia, Pa. 

F 

Flint, The American (Flint Glass Workers) — 

Ohio building, Toledo, Ohio. 
Fur Worker — 

132 Fourth street. Long Island City, N. Y. 

G 
Garment Workers' (United) Weekly Bulletin — 

Bible House, New York, N. Y. 
Glove Workers' Bulletin — 

166 West Washington street, Chicago, 111. 
Granite Cutters' Journal — 

Hancock building, Quincy, Mass. 



354 APPENDIX 

H 

Horseshoers' Journal — 

Second National Bank building, Cincinnati, Ohio. 

I 

Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers' Amalgamated Journal— 
501 House building, Pittsburgh, Pa. 



Ladies' Garment Workers' Journal — 

32 Union Square, New York City. 
Lather, The— 

401 Superior building, Cleveland, Ohio. 
Leather Workers' Journal — 

504 Postal building, Kansas City, Mo. 
Lithographers' Journal — 

309 Broadway, New York City. 
Locomotive Engineers' Journal — 

B. of L. E. building, Cleveland, Ohio. 
Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen's Magazine — 

Indianapolis, Ind. 
Longshoreman — 

702 Brisbane building, Buffalo, N. Y. 

M 

Machinists' Journal — 

A. F. of L. building, Washington, D. C. 
Maintenance-of-Way Employes' Advance Advocate — 

27 Putnam avenue, Detroit, Mich. 
Marine Engineer, The American — 

113 Plimie street, Norfolk, Va. 
Metal Polishers' Journal — 

409 Neave building, Cincinnati, Ohio. 
Mine Workers' Journal, United (Coal Miners) — 

1102-1109 Merchants' National Bank building, Indian- 
apolis, Ind. 
Miners' Magazine (Metal Miners) — 

Denham building, Denver Col. 
Mixer and Server (Bartenders and Hotel Employes) — 

Commercial-Tribune building, Cincinnati, Ohio. 
Molders' Journal, International — 

Box 699, Cincinnati, Ohio. 
Motorman and Conductor — 

104 East High street, Detroit, Mich. 

N 

National, The (Window Glass Workers) — 
419 Electric building, Cleveland, Ohio. 



APPENDIX 355 

p 

Painter and Decorator — 

Drawer 99, Lafayette, Ind. 
Paper Makers' Journal — 

127 North Pearl street, Albany, N. Y. 
Pattern Makers' Journal — 

Second National Bank building, Cincinnati, Ohio. 
Paving Cutters' Journal — 

Lock Box 27, Albion, N. Y. 
Photo-Engraver, The American — 

6111 Bishop street, Chicago, 111. 
Plasterer — 

608 Washington Bank building, Pittsburgh, Pa. 
Plate Printer (Steel and Copper Plate Printers) — 

414 Washington Loan and Trust Company building, Wash- 
ington, D. C. 
Player, The (White Rats Actors' Union) — 

227 West Forty-sixth street, New York, N. Y. 
Plumbers, Gas and Steam Fitters' Journal — 

Bush Temple of Music, Chicago, 111. 
Potters' Herald — 

West Sixth street, East Liverpool, Ohio. 
Pressman, The American (Printing Pressmen and Assistants) — 

Rogersville, Tenn. 

Q 

Quarry Workers' Journal — 
Box 394, Barre, Vt. 

R 

Railroad Telegrapher — 

Star building, St. Louis, Mo. 
Railroad Trainman — 

1207 American Trust building, Cleveland, Ohio. 
Railway Carmen's Journal — 

508 Hall building, Kansas City, Mo. 
Railway Clerk — 

Second National Bank building, Cincinnati, Ohio. 
Railway Conductor — 

Cedar Rapids, Iowa. 
Retail Clerks' International Advocate — 

Levering building, Main street, Lafayette, Ind. 

S 
Seaman's Journal, Coast — 

59 Clay street, San Francisco, Cal. 
Sheet Metal Workers' Journal — 

407 Nelson building, Kansas City, Mo. 
Shoe Workers' Journal — 

246 Summer street, Boston, Mass. 



356 APPENDIX 

stationary Firemen's Journal — 

3615 North Twenty-fourth street, Omaha, Neb. 
Steam Engineer, The International — 

6334 Yale avenue, Chicago, 111. 
Steam Shovel and Dredge — 

105 West Monroe street, Chicago, 111. 
Stereotypers and Electrotypers' Journal — 

2421 O street, Omaha, Neb. 
Stone Cutters' Journal — 

American Central Life building, Indianapolis, Ind. 
Stove Mounters and Range Workers' Journal — 

1210 Jefferson avenue, East, Detroit, Mich. 
Switchmen's Journal — 

326 Brisbane building, BuflFalo, N. Y. 



Tailor, The (Journeyman Tailors) — 

Sixty-seventh street and Stony Island avenue, Chicago, Ill(. 
Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Stablemen and Helpers' Magazine — 

222 East Michigan street, Indianapolis, Ind. 
Textile Worker — 

86-87 Bible House, New York, N. Y. 
Tile Layers and Helpers' Journal — 

119 Federal street, N. S., Pittsburgh, Pa. 
Tobacco Workers' Journal — 

Iroquois Life building, Louisville, Ky. 
Travelers' Goods and Novelty Workers' Bulletin — 

191 Boyd street, Oshkosh, Wis. 
Typographical Journal — 

Newton Claypool building, Indianapolis, Ind. 

U 
Union Leader, The (A. A. of S. and E. R. E. of A) — 

Unity building, 127 North Dearborn street, Chicago, 111. 
Union Postal Clerk — 

A. F. of L. building, Washington, D. C. 

W 
Wood Carver, The International — 

10 Carlisle street, Grove Hall, Boston, Mass. 



LABOR PAPERS 
Alabama. 

Birmingham — Labor Advocate, 206 Title Guarantee building. 

Arizona 
Phoenix — The Arizona Labor Journal, 238 East Washingtpii 
street. 



APPENDIX 357 

Arkansas. 

Fort Smith — The Union Sentinel, 406 Garrison avenue. 

Hot Springs — Union Labor Advocate. 

Little Rock — Union Labor Bulletin, 315 Scott street. 

California. 

Bakersfield — Union Labor Journal, Labor Temple. 

El Centro — Labor Monitor. 

Eureka — The Labor News, 738 Second street. 

Fresno — Labor News. 

Los Angeles — The Citizen, Union Labor Temple. 

Oakland — Alameda County Workman, 1121 Washington street. 

Tri-City Labor Review, 812 Broadway. 

The Western Butcher, 634 Thirteenth street. 
Sacramento — The Tribune. 
San Diego — Labor Bulletin, 721 West Market street. 

The Labor Leader, 716 First street. 
San Francisco — Labor Clarion, Labor Temple. 

Organized Labor, 1122 Mission street. 
San Jose — The Union, 173 West Santa Clara Street. 
Stockton — Labor Review, 28 South California Street. 

Colorado. 

Colorado Springs — Labor News, 112 East Cucharras street. 
Denver — Denver Labor Bulletin, Box 107. 
Pueblo — Labor Advocate, 108 West Second street. 

Connecticut. 

Hartford — Labor Standard, 284 Asylum street. 

New Haven — Connecticut Labor Press, 44 Crown street. 

Delaware. 

Wilmington — Labor Herald, 415 Shipley street. 

District of Columbia. 

Washington — The Federal Employee, A. F. of L. building. 
The Trade Unionist, 604 Fifth street northwest. 

Florida. 

Jacksonville — The Artisan, 107 Clay street. 
Miami — Labor Journal, 916 Avenue D. 
Tampa — The Tampa Citizen, 1110% Franklin street. 
Ybor City, Tampa — El Internacional ( in interest of local Cigar- 
makers' Union). 

Georgia. 
Atlanta — Journal of Labor, 929 Grant building. 
Augusta — The Labor Review, 21 Campbell building. 
Waycross — The Labor Index, Southern building. 



358 APPENDIX 

Idaho. 
Boise — The Gem Worker, Ninth and Main streets. 

Illinois. 
Aurora — The Fox River Leader. 
Bloomington — The Trades Review. 

Chicago — Illinois State Federation of Labor Weekly News Let- 
ter, 166 West Washington street. 

Life and Labor, 139 North Clark street. 
Danville — Labor Leader, 109 East Main street. 
Decatur — Industrial Union News, P. O. Box 293. 
East St. Louis — Illinois Labor Press, 210 Arcade building. 
Galesburg — Labor News, 56 North Cherry street. 
Joliet — The Tribune, Fargo building. 
Ottawa — Illinois Valley Tradesman, 203 Claus building. 
Peoria — Labor Gazette, 225 North Adams street. 

Labor News, 326 Harrison street. 
Quincy — The Labor Advocate, 600 Hampshire street. 
Rock Island — Tri-City Labor Review, Industrial Home building. 
Rockford — Labor News, 
Springfield — Illinois Tradesman, 407 Myers building. 

Indiana 

Evansville — The Advocate, 409 Sycamore street. 

Fort Wayne — The Worker. 

Indianapolis — Indiana Union Herald, 45 United building. 

The Union, 69-70 When building. 
Lafayette — Labor News, Box 75. 
Richmond — Labor Herald, 14 South Seventh street. 
South Bend — The Interurban Journal. 
Whiting — Lake County Labor Advocate. 

The Suburban. 

Iowa. 

Boone — The Independent, 810 Story street. 

Cedar Rapids — The Tribune, 210 Third avenue. 

Des Moines — Iowa Unionist, 221 Youngerman building. 

Dubuque — Labor Leader, Main and Sixth streets. 

Lyons — Tri-City Labor Voice, Box 96. 

Marshalltown — Marshalltown Bulletin. 

Muscatine — Labor's Voice, Box 2. 

Sioux City— The Union Advocate, 410 Fifth street. 

Kansas. 
Topeka— Kansas Trade Unionist, 113 East Eighth street. 

Kentucky. 

Louisville — Journal of Labor, 321 West Green street. 
New Era, 130 Third avenue. 



APPENDIX 359 

Louisiana. 

Gretna — Labor Advocate, Second and Lavoisier streets. 
New Orleans — Labor Record, 320 St. Charles street. 

Maryland. 

Baltimore — Labor Leader, Baltimore and North streets. 
Trades Unionist, Knickerbocker building. 

Massachusetts. 

Boston — Union Trades Label, 79 Sudberry street. 
Brockton — The Diamond, 74 Commercial street. 
Holyoke — The Artisan, 214 Maple street. 
Worcester — The Labor News, 48 Southbridge street. 

Michigan. 
Bay City— The Industrial Herald, 309 Ninth street. 
Detroit — Labor News, Griswold and Lamed streets. 
Grand Rapids — The Observer, 112 Louis street. 
Jackson — Square Deal, 145 West Pearl street. 
Lansing — Michigan Unionist, 211 Prudden building. 

Minnesota. 

Duluth — Labor World, 610 Manhattan building. 
Minneapolis — Labor Review, 420 Sixth street, south. 
St. Paul — Minnesota Union Advocate. 

Missouri. 
Hannibal — The Labor Press. 

Joplin — Joplin Labor Tribune, 827 Main street. 
Kansas City — Labor Herald, 408 Admiral boulevard. 
Saint Joseph — The Saint Joseph Union. 
Sedalia — Railway Federationist. 
Springfield — The Springfield Laborer. 

Montana 

Billings — Yellowstone Labor News, Babcock block. 
Butte — The Free Lance, 114 East Broadway. 

Nebraska. 

Lincoln — The Nebraska Federationist. 

Omaha — Omaha Unionist, 332 Brandeis Theater building. 
Western Laborer, 502 Barker block. 

Nevada. 

Reno — ^Nevada Federationist, 212 Virginia street. 

New Hampshire. 

Manchester — The New Hampshire Worker. 



360 APPENDIX 

New Jersey. 

Jersey City — Labor Review of Hudson County, 2277 Boulevard. 
Newark — Union Labor Bulletin, 68 South Orange avenue. 
Perth Amboy — The Labor News Weekly, 
Trenton — Trades Union Advocate, Box 529. 

New York. 

Albany — Albany Federationist, 223 Arkay building. 

Official Record, 45 Second street. 
Auburn — Labor Weekly, 22 North street. 
Buffalo— The Labor World, 626 Ellicott Square. 
Newburgh — Orange County Workman. 

New York City — New York Union Printer, 8 Reade street. 
Rochester — Labor Herald, 421 Cox building. 
Schenectady — The Empire State Leader. 
Syracuse — Industrial Weekly. 
Troy — Legislative Labor News, 399 River street. 
Yonkers — The Workman, 63 Main street. 

North Carolina. 

Asheville — Labor Advocate. 
Greensboro — The State Labor News. 

Ohio. 
Akron — The People, 21 South Main street. 
Canton — The Union Reporter. 
Cincinnati — The Chronicle, 1311 Walnut street. 

The Labor Advocate, 20 Thoms building. 
Cleveland — The Cleveland Citizen, 1125 Oregon avenue, north- 
east. 

Cleveland Federationist, 716 Vincent avenue. 
Columbus — Labor News, 165% North High street. 
Dayton — The Labor Review, 32 South Jefferson street. 
Hamilton — Butler County Press, 326 Market street. 
Springfield— The Tribune, 138 West High street. 
Toledo — Union Leader, Central Labor Union hall. 
Youngstown — Labor Record, 211 K. of C. building. 
Zanesville — Labor Journal, Sixth and South streets. 

Oklahoma. 

Oklahoma City — Oklahoma Federationist. 

Oregon. 

Portland — Oregon Labor Press. 

Pennsylvania. 

Allentown — The Labor Herald. 
Beaver — Beaver Valley Labor News. 



APPENDIX 361 

Pennsylvania ( Cont. ) 

Coaldale — The Toilers' Defense, 20-24 East street. 
Easton — Easton Journal, 234 Church street. 
Erie — Union Labor Journal. 
Lancaster — Labor Leader, 38 Market street. 
Philadelphia — Trades Union News, 619 Filbert street. 
Pittsburgh — National Labor Journal, Union Labor Temple. 
Pittston — Industrial Advocate. 
Uniontown — The Working World. 

South Carolina. 
Charleston — The Charleston Review, 50 Queen street. 
Greenville — Labor Press, 307 Westfield street. 

Tennessee. 

Chattanooga — Labor World, 735 Chestnut street. 

Knoxville — Voice of Labor, 208 Empire building. 

Memphis — Transportation and Labor Review, Southern Express 

building. 
Nashville — Labor Advocate, 335% Third avenue, north. 

Texas. 
Austin — The Austin Forum, 204 West Sixth street. 
Dallas — The Craftsman, 1802% Jackson street. 

The Toiler, Labor Temple. 
Denison — Labor Journal, 331 West Main street. 
El Paso — Labor Advocate, 409 Texas street. 
Forth Worth — Union Banner. 

Texas Railway Journal, Box 155. 
Galveston — Labor Dispatch, 212 Tremont street. 
Houston — Houston Labor Journal. 

Texas Carpenter. 
Port Arthur — Port Arthur-Beaumont Labor Dispatch. 
San Antonio — The Weekly Dispatch, Trades Council hall. 
Temple — The Wage Earner. 

Waco — The Union Standard, 415 Washington street. 
Wichita Falls — The Union Leader. 

Utah. 
Salt Lake City — Utah Labor News, Labor Temple. 

Virginia. 
Richmond — The Railroader, Campbell avenue and Commerce 
street. 
The Square Deal, Old Dominion Trust building. 
Roanoke — Industrial Era, 101 Commerce street. 

Washington. 

Bellingham — Labor Unionist, 1307 Twelfth street. 
Everett — The Labor Journal, Labor Temple. 



362 APPENDIX 

Washington (Cont.) 
Hoquiam — Southwest Washington Labor Press, Box 98. 
Seattle — Union Record, Labor Temple. 
Spokane — Labor World, 311 Sprague avenue. 
Tacoma — Labor Advocate, P. O. Box 1223, 
Walla Walla — Garden City Monitor, 5% East Main street. 

West Virginia. 

Charlestown — The West Virginia Federationist, P. O. Box 1106. 
Wheeling — The Wheeling Majority, 1506 Market street. 

Wisconsin. 
Marinette — The Twin City Laborer. 
Racine — Labor Advocate, 428 Wisconsin street. 

Wyoming. 

Cheyenne — Wyoming Labor Journal. 

Australia 
New South Wales. 

Sydney — The Co-operator. 
The Australian Worker. 

New Zealand. 

Wellington — The Maoriland Worker. 

Queensland. 
Brisbane — The Worker. 

Victoria. 
Melbourne — The Labor Call. 

Canada 
British Columbia. 

Vancouver — The B. C. Federationist, Labor Temple. 

Manitoba. 

Winnipeg — The Voice, 211 Rupert street. 

Ontario. 

Hamilton — Labor News, 48 Market street. 

The Barber, 48 Market street. 
Ottawa — The Canadian Plate Printer, 76 Preston street. 
Toronto — Industrial Banner, Labor Temple. 

Quebec. 

Montreal — The Labor World (Le Monde Ouvier), 2 St. Paul 
street, east. 



APPENDIX 363 

England 

Leicester — Monthly Report of National Union of Boot and Shoe 

Operatives. 
Manchester — The Cotton Factory Times. 
Typographical Circular. 

PoBTo Rico 
San Juan — Justicia. 

Scotland 
Glasgow — Associated Iron Moulders of Scotland Monthly Report. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Adams, Thomas S. and Sumner, Helen L. 

Labor Problems. Macmillan, 1911. 
American Federation of Labor. 

Proceedings of the Annual Conventions of. 
Ashley, W. T. 

Introduction to English Economic History and Theory. 2 vols. 
Putnam, 1915. 
Austin, Frederick. 

Economic Development of Modern Europe. 
Beard, Charles A. 

American Government and Politics. Macmillan, 1911. 
Beer, George Louis. 

English Speaking People. Macmillan, 1917. 
Benson, Allen L. 

The Truth About Socialism. 
Bliss, W. D. P. 

Encyclopedia of Social Reform. Funk & Wagnalls, 1908. 
Brooks, John Graham. 

American Syndicalism: the I. W. W. Macmillan, 1913. 
Carlton, Frank T. 

History and Problems of Organized Labor. Heath. 
Carver, Thomas N. 

Essays in Social Justice. Harvard University Press, 1916. 

Sociology and Social Progress. Ginn k Co., 1905. 
Clay, Sir Arthur. 

Syndicalism and Labour. Button, 1911. 
Coleman, George W. 

Democracy in the Making. Little, Brown & Co., 1915. 
Commons, John R. 

Labor and Administration. Macmillan. 

Races and Immigrants in America. Macmillan, 1911. 
Cooley, Charles H. 

Social Organization. Scribner's, 1913. 
Crawford, Mary C. 

The Story of the Ford Hall Meetings. 
Free. Ford Hall, Boston, Mass. 
Croly, Herbert. 

The Promise of American Life. Macmillan, 1910. 
Davis, George B. 

Elements of International Law. 
Devine, Edward T. 

Misery and Its Causes. Macmillan, 1910. 

864 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 365 

Dewey, John. 

Democracy and Education. Macmillan, 1916. 
Ely, Richard T. 

History of American Labor Movement. 
Ferguson, Charles. 

The Great News. Mitchell Kennerly, 1915. 
Forum Movement. 

Starting a Forum in a Church. 

Organized Freedom of Speech for 50,000 People. 

The Open Forum Movement ( Percy Stickney Grant ) . 

Significance of the Open Forum Movement (A. Lyle DeJar- 
nette). Free, Congress of Forums, 12 West 11th St., New 
York. 
Ghent, W. J. 

Our Benevolent Feudalism, Macmillan, 1902. 
Gibbons, H. de B. 

Industry in England. Scribner, 1897. 
Gibbs, Wilfred Stuart. 

The Minimum Cost of Living. Macmillan, 1917. 
Goodnow, Frank J. 

Social Reform and the Constitution. Macmillan, 1911. 
Gordon, Ernest. 

Anti-Alcohol Movement in Europe. 

Russian Prohibition. American Issue Publishing Co., 1916. 
Groat, George Graham. 

Organized Labor in the U. S. 

Attitude of American Courts in Labor Cases. Longmans, Green 
& Co., 1911. 
Hall, Bolton. 

Thrift. B. W. Huebsch, 1916. 
Hall, Prescott F. 

Immigration. Henry Holt, 1906. 
Hall, Thomas C. 

Social Solution in the Light of Christian Ethics. Eaton & 
Mains, 1910. 
Hammond, J. L. and Barbara. 

The Town Labourer. 1762-1830. 
Healy, Wm. 

Mental Conflicts and Misconduct. Little, Brown & Co. 
Henry. 

The Trades-Union Woman. 
Her r on, George D. 

The Menace of Peace. 
Hillquit, Morris. 

History of Socialism in the U. S. 

Socialism in Theory and Practice. 
Hillquit and Gompers. 

The Double Edge of Labor's Sword. 
Hobson, J. A. 

The Social Problem. James Nisbit & Co., 1909. 



366 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Hodder. 

Life of the Earl of Shaftesbury. 
Hollander, Jacob H. 

The Abolition of Poverty. Houghton MiflBin Co., 1914. 
Hollander and Barnett. 

Studies in American Trade Unionism. Holt. 
Howe, Frederick C. 

European Cities at Work. Scribner's, 1913. 

Our Immigrant Policy After the War. Scribner's Magazine, 
May, 1917, page 542. 

Privilege and Democracy. Scribner's, 1910. 
Hugan, Jessie W. 

American Socialism of the Present Day. Lane. 
Hunter, Robert. 

Labor and Politics. 

Violence and the Labor Movement. Macmillan, 1914. 
Hutchins, B. L., and Harrison, A. 

A History of Factory Legislation. P. S. King & Son, 1911. 
Industrial Relations. 

Report of U. S. Conmiittee on. 
Jenks, Jeremiah W. 

Governmental Action for Social Welfare. Macmillan, 1910. 
Jenks and Lauck. 

Immigration. 
King, Willford Isbell. 

The Wealth and Income of the People of the U. S. Macmillan, 
1915. 
Kirkup, Thomas. 

History of Socialism. 
Lecky. 

England in the Eighteenth Century. Vol. 6. 
Levine, Louis. 

Syndicalism in France. 
Lewis, Arthur D. 

Syndicalism and the General Strike. T. Fisher Unwin, 1912. 
Lock, Robert Heath. 

Heredity and Evolution. E. P. Dutton & Co. 
Macdonald, J. Ramsay. 

Syndicalism in America. Open Court Publishing Co. 
McLaughlin, Andrew C, and Hart, Albert Bushnell. 

Cyclopedia of American Government. Appleton, 1914. 
Macy, John. 

Socialism in America. Doubleday, Page. 
Marot, Helen. 

American Labor Unions. 
Masterman, C. F. G. 

The Condition of England. Methuen & Co., London, 1900. 
Mitchell, John, and Weyl, Charles E. 

Organized Labor. 
Morgan, Lewis H. 

Ancient Society. Henry Holt & Co. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 367 

Morrow. 

Social Diseases and Marriage. 
National Liberal Immigration League. 

The Immigrant Jew in America. B. F. Buch & Co, 1907. 
Nearing, Scott. 

Income. Macmillan, 1915. 

Social Adjustment. Macmillan, 1911. 

Social Sanity. Moflfat, Yard & Co., 1913. 
Oberholtzer, Ellis Parson. 

The Referendiun, Initiative and Recall. Scribner, 1912. 
Oliver. 

Dangerous Trades. 
Parsons, Frank. 

Legal Doctrine and Social Progress. Huebsch, 1911. 
Patten, Simon N. 

The New Basis of Civilization. Macmillan, 1910. 

The Social Basis of Religion. Macmillan, 1911. 
Physical Deterioration. 

Report of Committee on. London, 1904. 
Physical Training. 

General Plan and Syllabus for Physical Training in the Ele- 
mentary and Secondary Schools of the State of New York. 
Univ. of the State of N. Y. Bulletin, No. 631, Jan. 15, 1917. 
Albany N. Y. 
Physical Training. 

Official Handbook. 

Girls' Branch. 

Public Schools Athletic League, 1916-17. American Sports 
Pub. Co. (Spalding.) 

Physical Training. 

Official Handbook. 

Public Schools Athletic League, 1916-17. (Spalding.) Amer- 
ican Sports Publishing Co. 
Prison Association of N. Y. 

The Treatment of the Offender. Argus Co., Albany, 1912. 
Reeve, Sidney A. 

The Cost of Competition. McClure, 1906. 
Robertson, John M. 

The Fallacy of Saving. Macmillan, N. Y. 
Ross, Edward A. 

Changing America. Century Co., 1912. 

New World in the Old. 

Social Psychology. Macmillan, 1908. 
Schlueter. 

Lincoln, Labor and Slavery. 
Seager, Henry Rogers. 

Social Insurance. Macmillan, 1910. 
Shadwell, Arthur. 

Industrial Efficiency. Longmans, Green & Co., 1900. 
Simkhovitch, Mary Kingsbury. 

The City Worker's World. Macmillan, 1917. 



368 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Simkhovitch, Vladimir G. 

Marxism versus Socialism. Henry Holt, 1913. 
Simons, A. M. 

Social Forces in American History. 
Sorel, Georges. 

Reflections on Violence. B. W. Huebsch. 
Steinmetz, Charles P. 

America and the New Epoch. 
Stelzle, Charles P. 

The Church and Labor. Houghton Mifflin Co., 1910. 
Stephenson, Gilbert Thomas. 

Race Distinctions in American Law. D. Appleton & Co., 1910. 
Tridon, Andr6. 

The New Unionism. Huebsch, 1915. 
U. S. Bull, of Labor Statistics, No. 175. 

Condition of Women and Child Wage-earners in the U. S. (19 
vols.), Washington, 1912. Simimary in U. S. Bulletin of 
Labor Statistics, No. 175, Washington, Dec, 1915. 
Van Hise, Charles R. 

Concentration and Control. 

Conservation of National Resources in the United States. 
Wallace, Alfred Russel. 

Social Environment and Moral Progress. Funk & Wagnalls, 
1913. 
Wallas, Graham. 

Human Nature in Politics. Houghton Mifflin Co., 1909. 
Walling, William English. 

Progressivism and After. 

Socialism As It Is. 
Ward, Edward J. 

The Social Center. Appleton, 1913. 
Warner, Amos G. 

American Charities. Th. Y. Crowell & Co., N. Y. 
Wells, H. G. 

New Worlds for Old. 

Social Forces in England and America. Harper, 1914. 
Weyl, Walter E. 

The New Democracy. Macmillan, 1912. 
White, Arnold. 

Efficiency and Empire. Methuen & Co., London, 1901. 
White, William A. 

Mechanisms of Character Formation. Macmillan, 1916. 
Wilson, Woodrow, 

The New Freedom. Doubleday Page, 1914. 



9W''}u'm^:im^ 





m 








.>,;|'W'H| 






LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ^ 

019 566 907 7 



'tm-,: 



wm 


















•V ;^-. :>^\ 












^'■"^-'B^m^ 



